Abiraterone acetate for early stage metastatic prostate cancer: patient selection and special considerations

In recent years, therapeutic advances, together with new medication sequences and combinations, have improved outcomes for prostate cancer. For a long time, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has been the standard of care for newly diagnosed, metastatic prostate cancer, first as a standalone therapy and then in combination with taxane-based regimens. More recently, the addition of abiraterone acetate to ADT to achieve complete androgen blockade has proven beneficial for the treatment of metastatic hormone-resistant prostate cancer and metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC). In this review, we summarize recent findings on the early use of abiraterone in mHSPC and discuss survival benefits as reported in clinical trials. On the basis of existing data, abiraterone in combination with ADT could be considered a new standard of care for patients affected by mHSPC.