September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month-New Methods in Prostate Cancer Detection – Interview
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
National Prostate Health Month (NPHM), also known as National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, is observed every September in the United States (US) by health experts, health advocates, and individuals concerned with men’s prostate health and prostate cancer.
Other than skin cancer,
prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. The American Cancer Society’s estimates for prostate cancer in the US for 2021 are 1:
• About 248,530 new cases of prostate cancer
• About 34,130 deaths from prostate cancer
Once someone is diagnosed with prostate cancer, the patient and their doctor continue to check the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, which can be measured through a routine blood test. A rise in PSA can indicate whether the cancer is progressing, but it cannot show where cancer has spread.2
If the cancer is found to have spread to other parts of the body,
also known as metastatic prostate cancer, it might be important to learn about a biomarker called prostate-specific membrane antigen, or PSMA, that can tell patients and their physicians so much more. A biomarker is a characteristic of a patient’s cancer that can be measured and provides a doctor more information about cancer.
PSMA is found in more than 80% of men with prostate cancer.3 Although PSA and PSMA are both important biomarkers, they indicate different things.4
PSMA is identified with a positron emission tomography scan
(an imaging scan) and can show a patient where cancer has spread.5 PSMA can help give the doctor additional information to assess the progression of prostate cancer and help inform the decision that both the patient and doctor will make regarding a treatment plan.
Now there is a new campaign launching to help people learn more and better understand what PSMA is and what it can tell a patient and doctor about the patient’s metastatic prostate cancer.
Join me for a recent interview with Dr. Earle Burgess,
an oncologist from Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Burgess is a researcher and clinician specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of men with prostate cancer and he will explain the importance of PSMA, an important yet underrecognized biomarker in the diagnosis of prostate cancer and he will also outline the details of the new PSMA campaign.
See the entire interview here:
For more information, go to www.learnaboutpsma.com
Interview courtesy of Advanced Accelerator Applications, A Novartis Company.
1 American Cancer Society. Key Statistics for Prostate Cancer; Cancer A-Z, Prostate Cancer, About Prostate Cancer. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/about/key-statistics.html. Accessed July 28, 2021.
2 Bryce A, Alumkal J, Armstrong A, et al. Radiographic progression with nonrising PSA in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: post hoc analysis of PREVAIL. Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases. 2017;20:221-227.
3 Minner S, Wittmer C, Graefen M, et al. High level PSMA expression is associated with early PSA recurrence in surgically treated prostate cancer. Prostate. 2010;71(3):281-288.
4 Lange P, Erocle C, Lightner D, et al. The value of serum prostate specific antigen determinations before and after radical prostatectomy. The Journal of Urology. 1989;141(4):873-879.
5 Barrett J, Coleman E, Goldsmith S, et al. First-in-man evaluation of 2 high-affinity PSMA-avid small molecules for imaging prostate cancer. The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. 2013;54(3):380-387.
