How highs and lows in testosterone levels 'shock' prostate cancer cells to death

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/eeco-hha112916.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
How highs and lows in testosterone levels 'shock' prostate cancer cells to death
ECCO-the European CanCer Organisation

A strategy of alternately flooding and starving the body of testosterone is producing good results in patients who have metastatic prostate cancer that is resistant to treatment by chemical or surgical castration, according to new findings.

In a presentation at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Munich, Germany, today (Thursday), researchers reported that results from 47 men who have completed at least three cycles of bipolar androgen therapy (BAT) showed that the strategy was safe and effective. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels [2] fell in the majority of the men, tumours shrank in some men, in several the disease did not progress and this included some whose disease continued to be stable for more than a year. One man appears to have been "cured", in that his PSA levels dropped to zero after three months and have remained so for 22 cycles of treatment, with no trace of the disease remaining. The researchers are planning to treat a group of 60 men in total.

•••••