A New Prostate Cancer Treatment to Improve Outcomes and Reduce Side-effects

PROJECT SUMMARY ABSTRACT Among men prostate cancer is the most common non skin cancer and second leading cause of cancer death with over new diagnoses expected in Approximately of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime Current treatment options for prostate cancer however have sub optimal incidences of side effects that have a significant impact on patientsandapos quality of life including urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction As prostate cancer patients may live with the side effects of their treatment for decades there is a critical need for lower toxicity treatment techniques with an equal or greater probability of cancer control than current techniques Here we propose a new prostate cancer treatment technique Rotating Shield Brachytherapy RSBT RSBT uses a novel radiation source Gd Unlike the Ir radiation source used in existing radiotherapy approaches Gd can be partially shielded which enables the radiation source to emit a deliberately non symmetric dose distribution This effectively directs radiation away from sensitive healthy tissues and into tumor tissue and therefore offers several advantages over existing treatment techniques Our preliminary data indicate RSBT stands to become the prostate cancer treatment with the lowest incidence of resulting sexual dysfunction gastro intestinal and genitourinary toxicity due to its ability to reduce urethral rectal and bladder dose relative to conventional treatments We hypothesize RSBT will further enable prostate cancer dose escalation beyond conventional methods without increasing dose to healthy tissues thus improving metastasis free tumor control at years post treatment RSBT may also reduce the number of treatment sessions patients need compared to current therapies We have already developed concept models of several sub components of the prostate RSBT system to prove each component can be successfully constructed for eventual integration into a full RSBT prototype system Here we will demonstrate feasibility of the RSBT approach and its advantages over existing treatments We will develop a prototype of the needle catheter source capable of delivering RSBT We will develop RSBT apparatus functionality to enable the control and monitoring of the positioning of single catheter with using a simple moving template design that converts translational template motion to rotational catheter motion We will develop a multiple catheter control system by integrate the previously developed components into a complete RSBT prototype and validate the complete system by dose measurement Successful completion of these aims will demonstrate the feasibility and commercial potential of the RSBT approach Ultimately this work will result in an improved clinically available prostate cancer treatment Our technology stands to significantly reduce treatment related side effects for patients while providing equal or better cancer control thus improving patientsandapos cancer outcomes and quality of life http seer cancer gov statfacts html prost html PROJECT NARRATIVE Fourteen percent of all men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and current prostate cancer treatments have sub optimal incidences of side effects such as urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction As prostate cancer patients may live with these side effects for decades there is a critical need for lower toxicity treatments We propose a new prostate cancer treatment technique with the potential to have the lowest incidence of rectal urinary and sexual side effects while providing optimal cancer control