I had the opportunity to be in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) for the presentation of the Dendreon corporation successful clinical trial results for the first ever prostate cancer vaccine – PROVENGE.

PROVENGE trial results surpassed the survival benefits agreed to by the FDA as necessary for it to be approved as an available treatment. Provenge enhances the patient’s own immune system to fight prostate cancer. The first IMMUNOTHERAPY treatment of this type for any cancer; a landmark medical breakthrough.

PHEN has worked with and supported Dendreon over the past few years in the company’s quest to gain approval for PPROVENGE. Dr. Mitchell Gold, Dendreon president, presented at PHEN’s 2006 African American Prostate Cancer Disparity Summit on Capitol Hill, and he is committed to making certain that Provenge is available to the men who suffer disproportionately from prostate cancer.

Thomas A Farrington
PHEN President and Founder

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Degarelix prostate cancer drug makes testosterone levels fall dramatically and quickly
3. December 2008 22:10

New robotic prostate surgery not necessarily better

By Julie Steenhuysen
Tue Oct 13, 6:41 pm ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Men who have less invasive prostate cancer surgery — often done robotically — are more likely to be incontinent and have erectile dysfunction than men who have conventional open surgery, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Many men, especially those who are wealthy and highly educated, favor minimally invasive surgery because they assume the high-tech approach will yield better results, but the evidence on that is mixed, the team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We found men undergoing minimally invasive versus open surgery were more likely to have a diagnosis of incontinence and erectile dysfunction,” Dr. Jim Hu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said in a telephone briefing.
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By Simeon Bennett

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Drinking coffee may lower the risk of developing the deadliest form of prostate cancer, according to a Harvard Medical School study.

In research involving 50,000 men over 20 years, scientists led by Kathryn Wilson at Harvard’s Channing Laboratory found that the 5 percent of men who drank 6 or more cups a day had a 60 percent lower risk of developing the advanced form of the disease than those who didn’t consume any. The risk was about 20 percent lower for the men who drank 1 to 3 cups a day, and 25 percent lower for those consuming 4 or 5 cups.

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ROCHESTER, Minn. — In the largest, most modern, single-institution study of its kind, Mayo Clinic urologists mined a long-term data registry for survival rates of patients who underwent radical prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer. The findings are being presented at the North Central Section of the American Urological Association’s 84th Annual Meeting in Chicago.

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