[Second line therapy for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC)]

Every year in Germany approximately 12,000 men die of castration-resistant prostate cancer even though early detection using PSA-based diagnostics allows more patients to be diagnosed with a curable cancer. An established first line therapy at this stadium is docetaxel chemotherapy, given in a 3-week regimen, providing an overall survival advantage of 2 months. In 6-9 months, the patients treated primarily with docetaxel will progress to a docetaxel-insensitive phase which requires a secondary systemic therapy. Increasing understanding of molecular signal transduction has permitted a growing variety of promising modern drugs, including cabazitaxel, sipuleucel-T and abiraterone. More prospective clinical data will provide a large variety of different therapy combinations, sequence therapies or other therapy regimens particularly for selected subgroups of patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer.