[Chemotherapy in cancer of the prostate]

The most classical treatment of metastatic prostatic adenocarcinoma is hormone therapy. Most often, chemotherapy is proposed only when the tumor becomes hormonally unresponsive. But evaluation of its efficacy is impaired by the diversity of inclusion criteria used and by the different criteria of response assessment. Results of randomized, comparative studies show that all cytotoxic agents currently available have a similar response rate (about 30 to 40%). Use of combined chemotherapy does not seem to significantly improve these results. Several others ways have been proposed which attempt to improve the efficacy of chemotherapy (androgen stimulation, priming chemotherapy, adjuvant or neo-adjuvant chemotherapy...) but, most probably, progress will come from the discovery of more effective and selective cytotoxic agents, and not from the increase of clinical trials with the same agents.