Objective: To evaluate the effect of bicalutamide ('Casodex') 150mg (in addition to standard care), on the risk of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression, in patients with early prostate cancer.
Methods: The bicalutamide 150mg Early Prostate Cancer (EPC) programme is the largest clinical trial programme in the treatment of prostate cancer to date. This paper reports the PSA progression data from the EPC programme at a median of 3years' follow-up, for the overall study population, and across the radical prostatectomy and radiotherapy primary therapy strategies. PSA progression was predefined as the earliest occurrence of PSA doubling from baseline, objective progression, or death from any cause.
Result: Overall, bicalutamide 150 mg in addition to standard care significantly reduced the risk of PSA progression by 59% compared with standard care alone (HR 0.41; 95% CI 0.38, 0.45; p<<0.0001). Significant reductions were observed following radical prostatectomy (51%; HR 0.49; 95% CI 0.43, 0.56; p<<0.0001) and radiotherapy (58%; HR 0.42; 95% CI 0.33, 0.53; p<<0.0001). Further exploration of the data by disease stage, nodal status, Gleason score and pre-treatment PSA level revealed significant reductions in the risk of PSA progression across most prognostic risk factor subgroups.
Conclusions: Bicalutamide 150mg significantly reduces the risk of PSA progression, irrespective of whether patients received radical prostatectomy or radiotherapy as standard care. The EPC programme is ongoing and further progression and survival data are awaited.