Current treatments

For stage I–III patients the standard treatment includes surveillance, prostatectomy and radiotherapy. For all stage IV and high-risk stage III patients, androgen ablation by surgical or chemical castration can bring about sustained remission. First-generation anti-androgens such as flutamide and bicalutamide assist in this setting. However, castration resistance, which is characterized by genomic mutations in the androgen receptor (AR)2, inevitably develops in the stage IV setting, at which point the prognosis is poor. The historic standard treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), docetaxel, provides a median overall survival improvement of roughly 3 months.

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