Heterogeneity in metastatic prostate cancer
Metastatic prostate cancer patients often have between a few and hundreds of bone lesions throughout their body. Over the course of treatment some of these metastases will complete respond (disappear), partially respond (shrink), remain stable, or progress (grow) in addition to newly developed lesions. A patient won’t necessarily have uniform response (all disease either responds or progresses), but rather has a mixture of disease. My goal is to characterize and quantify this response heterogeneity. In a population of patients with newly diagnosed metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer, we can observe the evolution of response heterogeneity over time.
We also use imaging to determine treatment efficacy of new therapies. In a population of patients at high risk of developing metastatic prostate cancer, patients received a new prostate cancer vaccine and were images using NaF PET/CT. We could then compare the rate of metastases developed between patients who received the vaccine with those who haven’t.