Dr. Charles G. Drake is the Director of Genitourinary Oncology, Co-Director of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program, and Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.
Dr. Drake discusses a patient whose case intrigued him.
Have you had a particular patient who changed how you approach your work?
Dr. Charles Drake: Absolutely. I had a gentleman who had metastatic, castrate-resistant prostate cancer. He had been treated with hormonal therapy. He was about to go on chemotherapy. He had progression in his bone lesions, but he developed hematuria.
On CT scan, there was a fairly clear lesion in his bladder. We couldn’t tell what it was just by the scans, and his PSA was doubling quickly, it had reached 30 or so in less than a couple of months. We sent him to Dr. Ronald Rodriguez, who was at Johns Hopkins at the time, and he thought it looked like this was probably metastatic prostate cancer invading the gentleman’s bladder. Dr. Rodriguez did a transurethral fulguration, meaning he burned all of the tumor he could find in the bladder. After the procedure, he told me that there was a fair amount of prostate cancer left behind. While the procedure went well, and he got most of the tumor, he didn’t get all of it.
What happened next was fascinating. The patient’s PSA dropped. His PSA went from 30 to 20 to 10. It eventually nadired, or reached its lowest point, at less than 1 ng/ ml and he remained in remission for nearly two years. Although clearly anecdotal, in my mind, there is almost no question that this was one of those anecdotal abscopal responses, which makes you believe that it can happen. Almost certainly that was what happened for this patient. I’ll never forget it, frankly.
Interesting. An unexpected systemic response from local treatment, right?
Dr. Drake: Yes. It was brilliant. Just by treating the local disease in the bladder, this gentleman did well for over two years before it apparently progressed again, and he wound up getting chemotherapy. He also did very well with the chemo, so in my hopeful view, that suggests that maybe this fulguration procedure sparked a systemic immune response.
Join us to read the rest of Dr. Drake’s comments on the elusive abscopal effect.
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