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More than one million men in the US suffer with prostate cancer (PC) and according to the American Cancer Society 233,000 new cases will be diagnosed in the US in 2005 with an estimated 30,350 deaths.
Improvements in screening and diagnosis have led to significant reductions in mortality since the introduction of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test in the 1994. Treatment options vary according to age and the stage of cancer including watchful waiting, surgery, site-directed radiation and hormonal therapies. However, there is a high unmet clinical need for advanced PC patients, particularly those resistant to hormonal treatment.
Research is extremely active in this area and new agents with novel modes of action are being evaluated in clinical trials, including vaccines such as Provenge (Dendreon) and GVAX for hormone refractory PC.
Key points
- PC is the second leading cause of cancer in men in the US and the third most common cancer worldwide.
- Sales of PC drugs generated US$2.7 billion sales in 2004.
- In 2003, PhRMA estimated there were 44 compounds in clinical development for the treatment of PC accounting for 11% of oncology research projects in the US.
Questions answered by this chapter include:
- What is the principal cause of the market expanding by 55% by 2012?
- What impact will the patent expiry of Casodex (AstraZeneca) have?
- Why is much interest being expressed in monoclonal antibody therapies MLN2704 (Millennium Pharmaceuticals) and MDX-010 (Medarex)?
- The leading PC treatment in 2012 is estimated to be worth nearly US$1 billion a year. What is it and whos developing it?
- Vantas (Valera Pharmaceuticals) is expected to be one of the fastest growing LHRH agonists - why?
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