On April 28, 2011, the FDA officially approved a new medication to help fight prostate cancer in men who have developed castrations. Castrations are an advance form of resistant prostate cancer which is now mestastic even after homrone therapy and/or surgical castration. Being the thrid leading cause of death by cancer in all men, and the number one cause for men over the age of 75 with cancer, any advancement in the treatment of prostate cancer is a great accomplishment. As of now the most effective form of treatment is radiation to attempt to kill off the cancer cells. But for individuals with advance forms of prostate cancer, and for older men who may not be stable enough physically to undergo such a harsh treatment, a different form of treatment is required. Another treatment option which is used to preven the growth and spread of tumors is hormone therapy. Prostate tumors require the hormone testosterone in order to grow. By remoivng the testes as a form of hormone therapy, the male will no longer be able to produce testosterone, thus no longer providing the tumors with the fuel they require to thrive. For some this may be a drastic procedure, thus medications become very attractive to patients.
The new medication now avaialbe to patients is Zytiga (abiraterone acetate). How Zytiga works is that it inhibits CYP17 enzyme complex responsible for producing testoserone, a primary androgen in males. Androgens are steroid hormones which regulate and monitor numerous male characteristics. This is a great substitute for the removal of the testes, however does put patients at risk for multiple side affects. These include diarrhea, urinary frequency, cough, hpyertension, urinary tract infection, and joint swelling to name a few.
Zytiga has proven to work really well with another medication called Predinsone. Predisone is a corticosteroid which assits the body in replenishing steroids in patients which are no longer being produced naturally in the body. During placebo test trials with Predisone and Zytiga, there was a 35% reduction in the risk of death and a 3.9 month difference in median survival compared to placebo who were just treated with Predisone. In the research that I did, I could not find out exactly why or how the two work together, so I would be interested to see more studies done on the relationship between the two. 
During my research I found another medication which was released a nearly a year before Zytiga called Provenge. Provenge was released on April 29, 2011 and is the first immunotherapy approved by the FDA which uses a patient’s own immuce system cells to treat the patient. Immune cells are extracted from the patient, mixed with a protein, then instereted back into the patient in order to act as an immune stimulaiting agent. This added protein activates these cells in such a way that they produce on immune response on the tumor cells.
Prostate cancer hasn’t had a new treatment developed for nearly 10 years before the release of Provegene and now Zytiga. Its amazing how all of a sudden, new methods of treating such a deadly cancer have arisen in such a short period of time. I wonder if this is a common thread though in all cancer research on treatment. It’s clear that we can’t cure cancer with one big answer, the solution to cancer seems to be more like a giant puzzle. With little knowlegde of what exactly it was, research on cancer had a very slow start, but over time this has change. With more pieces of the puzzle coming together, will new developments be made faster as the final picture gets closer to being complete? Or is cancer just too complicated? I would be curious to see if there have been any patterns in other forms of cancer in which one new development makes a large breakthough, almost like a waterfall affect, in new methods of treatment. 