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One of the most frequent questions I hear in my clinic is “are we making any progress?” or “is there anything new out there?” The answer is always “yes” or more properly YES!
To keep up on the latest information on prostate cancer I have a few suggestions for places to search on the Internet. First, you can search for prostate cancer every single day if you want and get overwhelmed using the NCBI website, PubMed. Next, you can do a search on Google Scholar which will also include abstracts and patents, as well as citations that list something like prostate cancer. (I modified the clickable link to look at “prostate cancer” for 2015). Finally, you should keep track of new treatments that are being evaluated via clinical trials by looking at Clinicaltrials.gov. (link again modified to look for “prostate cancer” but you can modify to look for trials with specific agents or available in specific locations)
By posting these blogs and in other ways, many of us try to help our patients keep up on the various news alerts that circulate as well. Subscribe to this blog and you will get about one email/month from me that reflects the most pressing topic(s) I have heard about from my patients. I also highly recommend the Prostate Cancer Foundation website, which for today’s post “2015’s major advances” has an excellent list of the 2015 advances that I am hard pressed to improve upon, including video presentations. I hope that helps and wish you all a healthy 2016 which I guarantee is going to have an avalanche of progress, beginning with the upcoming ASCO GU symposium. I’ll try to post some of the highlights from there next month.
prost8blog 
Thanks Michael, and a great 2016 to you.
Dr Glode, Thank you for a well timed message of hope!
Happy New Year to you and yours!
Dr. Glode, thanks for all the info links. How does a “layman” sort through, for example, all the 3370 clinical trials and determine which may be appropriate for his specific circumstances? I realize only about 1/3 of the current trials are actively looking for participants, but even that figure (1033) is a bit daunting when trying to figure out which specific study may be the best option for anyone’s particular circumstances. Appreciate any suggestions you can provide, and best wishes to you as well in the coming year. Thank God there is all this ongoing research, and thank you for keeping everyone informed.
Steve – great question and no really easy answer. However, there are some obvious things I’m sure you are aware of. For example, knowing that phase II trials are generally new drugs that may or may not be active enough to gain approval, while phase III compares a standard of care to some new drug or combination can be helpful. You of course have to know your clinical state. (e.g. “rising psa with negative scans” or “castrate resistant”…) some of these terms will work as filters, just like geographic filters. In the end, I’m afraid that none of your doctors will have the time to go through this, so it is best to do the homework yourself and then take the potential list to your physician who hopefully can look into the eligibility criteria and help out.
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