Strategies to destroy treatment-defying tumours in men with prostate cancer are beginning to make a difference.
When the patient entered a trial of an experimental prostate-cancer treatment, he was in bad shape. The disease had spread to at least ten different parts of his body, including his arm and leg bones, and his hip, spine and ribs. The tumours caused him so much discomfort that, despite heavy use of pain-relieving medication, he was unable to sit up. Chemotherapy had failed to halt the spread of the cancer. But now, nearly seven years after finishing the trial, the patient’s tumours have disappeared, his pain has vanished and his blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA; a protein biomarker used to monitor malignancy) give no indication of the disease.
