Wed 22 Mar 2006 02:45 PM CST

In a study to be published in the April issue of the British Journal of
Urology International, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los
Angeles have shown that raloxifene (brand name Evista), a drug commonly
used to treat osteoporosis, has a potential clinical benefit in treating
men with prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer and the second leading
cause of cancer-related death among men living in the United States.
Approximately one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer
during his lifetime. About 35,000 men will die this year of advanced
prostate cancer.

"We undertook this study because we desperately need new therapies for
patients with advanced prostate cancer," said David B. Agus, M.D.,
research director of the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at
Cedars-Sinai and principal investigator of the study.
Since raloxifene is a drug already on the market, researchers were able
to move directly into a Phase II clinical trial. They identified the
presence of the beta isoform of the estrogen receptor in prostate cancer
tissue samples, moved directly into studies of animals with human
prostate cancer, and then onto human clinical trials. The entire process
only took between two and three years.

"It used to be that to show effectiveness through research studies,
cancer drugs needed to shrink tumors by 50 percent," Agus said. "Now,
the new way of thinking about the effectiveness of cancer drugs is
whether they can slow cancer's growth, which ultimately may
significantly benefit patients."

Through the study, patients were given a daily oral dosage of
raloxifene, and the disease and its symptoms were followed on a regular
basis. Some of the patients in the clinical trial taking raloxifene
showed evidence of disease stabilization manifested by a slowing or
stopping of the growth of their prostate cancer.

"The outcome from the Phase II clinical trial merits further study in a
randomized clinical trial to demonstrate the clinical benefit of this
targeted therapy," said Ronald L. Shazer, M.D., primary author of the
manuscript.

The study was funded by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Elle and
Paul Stephens Family Foundation.

This information was provided by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional    
"Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is
invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so."
http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc