FDA sanctions breakthrough treatment for specific kind of Prostate Cancer

FDA has approved a certain Erleada for the treatment of patient inflicted with prostate cancer that has not spread (non-metastatic), but that continues to grow despite treatment with hormone therapy (castration-resistant).

Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence and acting director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research claimed “The FDA evaluates a variety of methods that measure a drug’s effect, called endpoints, in the approval of oncology drugs. This approval is the first to use the endpoint of metastasis-free survival, measuring the length of time that tumors did not spread to other parts of the body or that death occurred after starting treatment.”

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health, prostate cancer is the second most common form of cancer in men in the U.S.. The NCI estimates approximately 161,360 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017, and 26,730 were expected to die of the disease. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of prostate cancer cases are castration-resistant.

The safety and efficacy of Erleada was based on a randomized clinical trial of 1,207 patients with non-metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer. Patients in the trial either received Erleada or a placebo. All patients were also treated with hormone therapy, either with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analog therapy or with surgery to lower the amount of testosterone in their body (surgical castration). The FDA granted the approval of Erleada to Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies.