Dr. David I. Lee on PSMA-PET’s potential in prostate cancer

In this video, David I. Lee, MD, FACS, discusses prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-PET’s potential in prostate cancer. Lee is director of the UCI Health Comprehensive Prostate Cancer Program and professor of urology at the UCI School of Medicine.

Transcription:

I think one of the real big future directions in prostate cancer is going to be PSMA-PET scan evaluation and then using that technology to be able to deliver therapeutics, because that very targeted ability, which helps us now to see prostate cancer better at the initial diagnosis, and then to stage patients better, I think is actually changing things already. Our old nomograms, which we used to use in order to evaluate lymph node involvement and longer term survival, I think those are all going to change because of PSMA-PET scan evaluation. Those patients who have positive scans, which we couldn't appreciate otherwise with MRI and bone scanning before, we're seeing those patients now. And so that creates a whole different stratification method, which I think is going to impact how we take care of patients. The very interesting data out of Germany and Australia and how they actually use lutetium in order to treat [patients with] prostate cancer when they have metastasis, I think, is very encouraging. And in the United States, it's FDA approved for that use, but moving that treatment option further up in the timeline of men who have advanced prostate cancer I think is going to be really interesting to watch because we can not only detect these lesions but also treat them, and who knows how far up along the chain that it's going to get. I don't know that it's ever going to replace surgery or radiation, which are the gold standards for localized prostate cancer therapy, but it's going to be really interesting to see how we can team these therapies up together. The challenge of treating men with high-risk disease and potential micro metastatic disease with this type of targeted therapy is really exciting.

This transcription was edited for clarity.