Dr. Scott Eggener on Focal Therapy for Prostate Cancer

This interview, “Dr. Scott Eggener on Focal Therapy for Prostate Cancer,” is provided by Grand Rounds in Urology’s content partner, Prostatepedia.

Scott Eggener, MD, an internationally known robotic and open surgeon, specializes in caring for patients with prostate, kidney, and testicular cancers.

He is the Director of the Prostate Cancer Program and Co-Director of the High Risk & Advanced Prostate Cancer Clinic at University of Chicago Medicine.

Prostatepedia spoke with him about focal therapy for prostate cancer.

Why did you become a doctor?

Dr. Scott Eggener: I came around to medicine later than most people. I always had an interest in science and math. The combination of being able to use those skills to help people out and to have a component of life that combines clinical care with research was ultimately the attraction that led me down this path.

Have you had any particular patients whose cases changed either how you see your own role as a doctor or how you view the art of medicine in general?

Dr. Eggener: I try to learn regularly from my patients. The overwhelming majority of cases are fairly routine from a medical standpoint, but what makes my role fascinating are the unique elements of their background or hobbies and getting to know them.

As far as memorable experiences, there are so many standouts from both the really heartwarming celebratory side and the profoundly depressing side. When you have a practice that focuses exclusively on cancer, you’ve got the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

What is focal therapy? Where does it fit into the spectrum of treatments available to men with prostate cancer today?

Dr. Eggener: Focal therapy is a dense topic. The bird’s-eye view is that, traditionally, any treatment of prostate cancer localized to the area of the prostate is focused on the entire prostate. Unfortunately, the prostate is in ground zero of the pelvis where there are a lot of other important structures. Any treatment, even when done by a very experienced specialist, poses a risk of short and long-term side effects. The first and most important fork in the road is whether the cancer even requires treatment. Active surveillance, monitoring the cancer, is a very attractive approach for many men with an extremely low-likelihood of cancer-related problems.

The concept of focal therapy is to only treat the part of the prostate that has the cancer and leave the rest of the prostate alone with the utopian dream of limiting the risk of cancer-related problems while trying to optimize the quality of life and minimize exposure to side effects. It’s analogous to women with breast cancer. There was a time when every woman with any type of breast cancer had a radical mastectomy. Through good science, clinical trials, brave patients, and data nowadays, somewhere between 65 and 80 percent of women get a lumpectomy. We’re in the very early stages of determining whether a similar strategy is safe and smart for some men with prostate cancer.

There are different forms of focal therapy: are some forms more effective than others?

Dr. Eggener: There are literally about a dozen different ways of ablating a part of the prostate.Focal therapy is a concept of treating part of the prostate. There are a lot of different mechanisms of trying to destroy parts of the prostate. There is not enough comparative data to say A is better than B or C is worse than D. There are some focal therapy interventions that have been studied relatively rigorously. Most have been studied in small populations of men. None have sufficient longterm follow-up, and none have ever been sufficiently compared to surgery or radiation therapy, which are the conventional and time-tested treatment options.

Is that one of the controversies over focal therapy—that there’s not enough long-term data to know which is better or not?

Dr. Eggener: There are a gazillion different reasons why focal therapy is controversial. Number one is that focal therapy turned the whole paradigm on its head in that prostate cancer is typically multifocal where about three-quarters of men with prostate cancer have multiple cancers within their prostate. Reflexively, a lot of people feel the entire prostate needs to be treated.

What we know based on elegant studies is the overwhelming majority of those other cancers within the prostate are not destined to cause any problems. There are many prostate cancers that are indolent, and if they are destined to cause problems, it’ll be years or decades down the road. Some people are fundamentally opposed to the concept of treating part of the prostate. There isn’t enough high-quality, long-term data to show whether the focal therapy paradigm is beneficial for certain men.

Conceptually, it’s supposed to be helpful, but until we have proper clinical trials, that’s just speculative. That is why there are dozens of clinical trials. Hopefully, one day we’ll have quality data. There have been a lot of companies interested because it’s attractive to patients.

The FDA has recently gotten more engaged. There have been multiple public meetings with the FDA trying to figure out how best to evaluate focal therapy. There is a swell of interest, but it’s going to take thoughtful investigators to provide the data. Unfortunately, as you know, in the landscape of prostate cancer there is often a lot of enthusiasm without data supporting it. Unfortunately, there are always charlatans willing and capable of putting the cart before the horse.

Is there anything about focal therapy that would prevent a man from getting a later treatment—i.e. a radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy?

Dr. Eggener: Conceptually, the plan is to do focal therapy and it doesn’t necessarily burn any bridges. Theoretically, the more time that passes there is an increasing chance that in certain men the cancer can spread elsewhere in the body, although if you select men well for focal therapy you can minimize those risks. Depending on the type of focal therapy that’s used, some have close to no impact on the efficacy of future treatments. There are other forms of focal therapy that are more aggressive and would impact the possibility of doing surgery or radiation in the future.

Do you have advice for men reading this who might be considering focal therapy?

Dr. Eggener: It’s exciting conceptually but we’re still in the very early stages of properly evaluating this approach. There are a range of practitioners who will offer focal therapy from very thoughtful prostate cancer experts with very selective criteria, clinical trials, and tempered enthusiasm to those on the other end of the spectrum—people who are one trick ponies who believe nearly every man they see might be a candidate for focal therapy.

My advice to people is if you’re newly diagnosed with prostate cancer and think focal therapy might be an attractive option for you, seek out someone who has expertise in prostate cancer who offers focal therapy amongst many other options and can thoroughly discuss the knowns and unknowns.

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