New study open to men with advanced prostate cancer

Men with advanced prostate cancer that has become resistant to hormone therapy may be candidates for a new research study that seeks to determine whether a Vitamin D-like compound known as Hectoral enhances the impact of a chemotherapy treatment commonly known as Taxotere®.

The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center (UWCCC) study will compare the results of patients who receive Hectoral plus Taxotere® (generic name: docetaxel) with those who receive solely Taxotere®. Hectoral is a form of Vitamin D that is believed to yield anti-cancer benefits of straight Vitamin D without the unwanted escalating calcium levels that straight Vitamin D can produce. Developed by Bone Care International in Middleton, Wis., Hectoral is currently on the market for use in dialysis patients. UW–Madison biochemist Harry Steenbock discovered in 1924 that Vitamin D could be artificially produced.

“More than 30,000 men in this country will die of prostate cancer in 2002,” said George Wilding, a UWCCC medical oncologist who is the primary investigator of the Taxotere®-Hectoral study. “For those men whose cancer has spread beyond the prostate, we must find better treatments to improve survival.”

Patients who enroll in this study must:

• have advanced prostate cancer that has spread to the surrounding tissue or bone;
• have prostate cancer that has become resistant to previous testosterone-suppressing hormone therapy;
• have increasing PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels;
• not have received any prior chemotherapy.

Wilding said that previous research conducted at the UWCCC and elsewhere has already demonstrated that Vitamin D and similar compounds may offer some promise for boosting the effectiveness of chemotherapy. For example, a preliminary study at the University of Oregon has shown more than 25 percent of the men with advanced disease responded to the combination of Vitamin D and Taxotere®.

Howard Bailey, another UWCCC medical oncologist, said UW researchers have been studying other forms of Vitamin D such as Hectoral with the hope that they will be more effective against cancer and better tolerated by patients than Vitamin D itself.

“Our preliminary and ongoing work has shown that we can give larger doses of Hectoral than straight Vitamin D,” Bailey said.

Taxotere® is currently a chemotherapy treatment for certain forms of prostate, breast and lung cancer. It has also shown evidence of effectiveness in patients with certain forms of ovarian, head and neck, gastric, pancreatic and bladder cancers.

To make this trial available to patients across the state, the UWCCC will conduct the study throughout the Wisconsin Oncology Network, which is coordinated by the UWCCC. In addition to the UWCCC in Madison, four Wisconsin Oncology Network sites – St. Vincent’s Hospital in Green Bay, Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse, Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital and Waukesha Memorial Hospital – are currently enrolling patients for the Taxotere®-Hectoral study.

Other Wisconsin Oncology Network sites expected to participate in the study in the coming months include:

• UW Health Oncology, 1 S. Park St./Meriter Hospital, Madison
• UW Cancer Center Wausau Hospital, Wausau
• L.C. Ferguson Cancer Center/UW Health Oncology, Freeport, Illinois
• Aurora Sinai Medical Center/UW Health Oncology, Milwaukee