Once metastatic prostate cancer progresses in the face of hormonal therapy, it is classified as being hormone-refractory. Therapeutics options for patients with hormone-refractory prostate cancer are extremely limited; in particular, cytotoxic chemotherapy has repeatedly failed to demonstrate activity in this disease. Recently, Scher and colleagues have reported that the discontinuation of flutamide in patients whose prostate cancer is progressing despite total androgen blockade may occasionally result in disease regression. We evaluated this clinical maneuver in two trials. Our preclinical efforts in the field of prostate cancer have focused on the evaluation of the single point mutation in the androgen receptor of the LNCaP cells, which has been hypothesized to explain the benefit of flutamide discontinuation, and evaluation of new combination chemotherapeutic agents for this disease.
