A clinical trial of certain advanced prostate cancer patients found that a higher number of men who received radiotherapy alongside standard treatment were alive after three years compared to those who did not receive radiotherapy.
According to data presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress and published simultaneously in The Lancet, treating the prostate with radiotherapy led to a three-year survival rate in 81% of patients whose cancer had spread to the lymph nodes and nearby bones, compared with 73% in those not receiving radiotherapy.
The benefit was only seen in this unique group, and there was no increase in survival among men whose cancer had spread further to other organs.
The results from the study, dubbed Stampede, suggests that radiotherapy plus hormone therapy should become the standard of care for men. The trial looked at around 2,000 men with advanced disease and was one of the largest ever undertaken in prostate cancer. Half were given standard treatment while the other half also had radiotherapy to the prostate.
Currently, hormone therapy is the standard treatment for prostate cancer.
"These findings could and should change standard of care worldwide," lead researcher Chris Parker told journalists assembled at a press conference at ESMO. "Until now, it was thought that there was no point in treating the prostate itself if the cancer had already spread because it would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted," said Parker, a consultant clinical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. He said this study proves the benefit of prostate radiotherapy for these men, adding that radiotherapy is a simple, relatively cheap treatment.
About 47,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the U.K., and over 11,500 men die from the disease.
"This is a monumental finding that could help thousands of men worldwide," said Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research U.K.'s chief clinician. "We now need to investigate whether this could also work for other types of cancer. If we can understand exactly why these men benefit from the additional radiotherapy treatment, we could hopefully use this approach to benefit even more patients."
The study was funded by Cancer Research U.K. and the U.K. Medical Research Council.
The 2018 European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Munich is expected to bring together 26,000 cancer professionals from all over the world to discuss the latest research. The conference ends Oct. 23.