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GU Cancers 2019 | Prostate cancer radiotherapy: an update from the 2019 Genitourinary cancers symposium

Gert De Meerleer, MD, PhD, of the Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium, speaks at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, held in San Francisco, CA. He covers the key areas of research currently being addressed by the prostate cancer radiotherapy community; including an update on the BART study, using immunotherapy in combination with radiotherapy, proton beam therapy.

Transcript (edited for clarity)

Well, in prostate cancer, I think the key research area that we are now developing is one, go for stereotactic body radiotherapy for prostate cancers too. This is mainly done in United States and Canada...

Well, in prostate cancer, I think the key research area that we are now developing is one, go for stereotactic body radiotherapy for prostate cancers too. This is mainly done in United States and Canada. We are mainly focusing on new indications. For instance, a patient with a heavy lymph node metastatic load, having lot of pelvic lymph nodes, we don’t consider them not curable anymore. We consider them curable and we go for preventive radiotherapy of the lymph nodes in the abdomen. So in the urethroperineal region, because we know once you have pelvic lymph nodes you have a high chance of developing lymph nodes higher up. This is a study we’re doing now clinically, called the BART study. It’s running really well.

Secondly, I think the interaction of immunotherapy and stereotactic body radiotherapy will be the future of research. We know that stereotactic body radiotherapy, apart from killing this blood vessels, like I spoke about some minutes ago, it also stimulates the immune system. I think that upcoming decade that a lot of studies will check whether if you add radiotherapy or stereotactic body radiotherapy to immunotherapy, for instance, kidney cancer but also maybe in prostate cancer. Whether this combination or not end up in a far better response rate than immunotherapy alone. I think this will be the future in radiation research. That, in generally speaking of course, the proton therapy, but this is more not new indications, it’s more to use with new technology.

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