Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men.
It will affect more than 10 percent of men during their lifetime.
So, experts are excited about a new technique for prostate cancer screening developed at UCSF and UCLA that some are calling a "game-changer."
Dr. Thomas Hope is a radiologist who led the clinical trials at UCSF.
He explained that traditional screening could indicate that cancer was in the body, but it could not identify exactly where the cancer cells were located after they migrated from the prostate.
Now, the FDA has granted approval for the new prostate-specific membrane antigen PET imaging, or PSMA PET.
"It is a camera that can actually image the radioactivity that we inject," Dr. Hope told KCBS Radio’s "As Prescribed" program. "It allows us to localize where that disease is better and more accurately than you can with these other older imaging modalities like CT alone or a bone scan."
It could make a big difference for men in whom cancer recurs after initial treatment.
"For example, if you take a man who had undergone a radical prostatectomy," he explained. "The majority of those men will be cured afterward. Maybe 70 percent of them will never have a recurrence of prostate cancer. But let’s say maybe 30 percent of them, their PSA will start to rise after surgery. The PSA is produced only by prostate cells and so if you remove the prostate it should go to zero. So, in a patient after radical prostatectomy we know there is disease because the PSA is rising, we just don’t know where it is."
The new technique can find those cells outside of the prostate and could change the way patients are treated and, hopefully, cured. In some cases, it could even mean that patients might avoid having their prostates removed unnecessarily.
He added the FDA approval leads to the imaging becoming more widespread.
"This is a very unusual circumstance where two academic centers got a drug approved," said Dr. Hope. "That doesn’t happen really very often ever. It has only happened two other times before. So right now, it is unfortunately only available at UCSF and UCLA."
He hopes the technique could ultimately be applied to the treatment of cancer.
'That’s the most exciting part of this to me," he said.
Related
