Young Czech scientist develops revolutionary prostate cancer treatment
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Loading... - Gabriele Romano
- 12 Jul 2022
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Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men worldwide and the most common in the Czech Republic. The incidence of the disease in Czechia has risen by as much as 70 percent since the early 1990s. Martina Benešová, a young Czech researcher, is part of a team at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg which developed a revolutionary new treatment for patients with a very advanced stage of prostate cancer for whom other treatments had proved ineffective. I spoke to her and started by asking what is new about PSMA-617 compared to previous prostate cancer treatment methods.
“Endoradiotherapy with PSMA-617 is very special in multiple ways. One of these is that it is so-called theranostic, meaning you can use it for both diagnosis and treatment. It is also new in the way that it works for patients who already received all available therapies for prostate cancer, and despite the fact that they were resistant to all these therapies which are approved and accepted and in use, the application of endoradiotherapy with PSMA-617 works in these patients who have practically no other treatment options.”
You worked in a research team at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg - what was your personal contribution to the development of PSMA-617?
“The development of PSMA-617 was in fact the topic of my doctoral thesis, so I was responsible for the development of theranostic pharmaceuticals which could be used for both diagnosis and treatment. I was responsible for the design, then for the synthesis of those pharmaceuticals and also for their pre-clinical evaluation, and then the clinical translation which was then carried out by the university clinic in Heidelberg.” Read More...
