Dr. Veda Giri discusses registry evaluating genetic testing in prostate cancer

In this video, Veda Giri, MD, discusses the background of the study, "Factors related to men’s experience with prostate cancer germline testing," which was presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Giri is division chief of Clinical Cancer Genetics for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer and assistant director of Clinical Cancer Genetics for Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut.

Transcription:

This is called the PROGRESS registry. That stands for PROstate cancer Genetic Risk Experience and Support Study. This is really grounded in being able to explore men's experience with genetic testing for prostate cancer. The field of germline testing for prostate cancer has expanded significantly; it's really become central in terms of thinking about treatment for men with metastatic prostate cancer, even thinking of impacting ways of evolving care for men with high-risk disease, and then certainly in terms of hereditary cancer implications for men across the spectrum, whether they're at risk for prostate cancer, localized low-risk disease, all the way to high-risk and metastatic disease. Therefore, the implications are for the patients themselves, but also for their families in terms of cancer risks and screening. One of the understudied areas for this is men's experience with genetic testing for prostate cancer. Being able to deliver genetic evaluation requires some insights, and there are some nuances and complexities that need to be addressed. Patients need to understand, what are the genes that are going to be tested? Why are they being tested in terms of whether it's for their treatment and/or for hereditary cancer risk, maybe to inform prostate cancer screening as well, for men that don't have prostate cancer but are concerned about risk. They then have to understand that again, these have hereditary cancer implications. What are the potential findings in terms of uncertain findings that can come out of genetic testing? What are the federal laws that protect in terms of genetic discrimination? What's protected; what's not protected? These are just some of the points that patients need to understand about genetic testing. And then once they go through their testing, to ensure that they understand the results, the nature of the results, what do they mean in terms of their care? What do they mean for their families? So there's a lot that really needs to be uncovered about men's experience with this whole spectrum of care, and that's been understudied. So we designed the PROGRESS registry as a way to garner this information about men's experience with prostate cancer genetic testing for those men that had gone through genetic testing already and to reflect back on their experience. The PROGRESS registry was in collaboration with investigators across the United States; it really was a team effort. Over 29 states had participants enrolled into the PROGRESS registry, so it had great geographical representation in the United States. And we did achieve our goal of recruiting 500 men, so this particular abstract that was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in February 2023 was reporting on the first results from the PROGRESS registry.

This transcription was edited for clarity.