GU Cancers Symposium 2020: Prostate Cancer Subtypes as Predictive Biomarker for Response to Chemotherapy
Posted: Friday, March 6, 2020
A study presented at the 2020 Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium in San Francisco (Abstract 162) suggested that not all patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer may benefit from docetaxel. Using gene-expression profiling, the research team found that tumor subtypes may be associated with different treatment benefits. The investigators noted that additional research is necessary to validate their findings.
“Identifying which patients will benefit from chemotherapy is one of the most important clinical questions in the management of metastatic prostate cancer,” Christopher Sweeney, MBBS, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, stated in a press release. “The ability to identify these patients at diagnosis is a very important step toward improving patient outcomes and accelerating the inclusion of novel drugs into the standard of care.”
Of the 198 patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer and available specimens, 160 completed gene-expression profiles were available. The researchers tested the predictive ability of gene-expression profiling with regard to docetaxel treatment. Patients were classified as having luminal B (n = 80), basal (n = 77), and luminal A (n = 3) disease.
Among the patients who received docetaxel, those classified as having the luminal B subtype had a much longer overall survival than those who did not receive docetaxel. In addition, this patient group had a longer time until the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer than those who did not receive docetaxel.
The researchers did not observe any significant differences in overall survival between those with basal subtype prostate cancer who received docetaxel and those who did not. However, the time to castration resistance improved among those patients who received docetaxel.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit coi.asco.org.
