l trattamento del tumore prostatico resistente alla castrazione = Treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer

The treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) represents one of the oncological fields where the most impressive improvements has been observed in the last decades. At the beginning of this century, the expected survival of mCRPC patients was not more than 12 months. After the introduction of docetaxel in the clinical practice in 2004, and the recent availability of new drugs cabazitaxel, abiraterone acetate, enzalutamide, and radium-223 the landscape is dramatically changed with an expected median survival of about three years. The possibility of administering docetaxel, abiraterone acetate, and enzalutamide as first line treatment, and cabazitaxel, abiretone acetate, and enzalutamide as second line, as well as the availability of radium-223 for the treatment of mCRPC patients regardless of chemotherapy administration, changed the natural history of the disease. At the same time, it is probable that also the biology of the disease is changing with the appearance of mechanisms of resistance which are common to all the drugs. This plays a central role in sequencing the available drugs not only in the first and second line setting but also beyond the second line. The future challenges for the oncologists will be to develop new drugs able to overcome the resistances, mainly when they are native, to find the optimal sequence to optimize the use of available drugs, to place at the best place other active drugs, such as vaccines and radiopharmaceuticals, to exploit the new drugs also in a hormone-sensitive phase.