Michael J. Morris, MD, on Future Directions of PSMA Imaging in Prostate Cancer

Results from the phase III CONDOR trial, presented during the 2020 ASCO Virtual Scientific Program, showed that prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) 18F-DCFPyL-positron emission tomography (PET) scans demonstrated a correct localization rate (CLR) of 84.8-87.0% per 3 blinded independent readers, meeting the trial’s primary endpoint.

In an interview with CancerNetwork, Michael J. Morris, MD, prostate cancer section head at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center discussed the impact of those results, and next steps for PSMA imaging.

Transcription:

So, I think that to answer that, you know, there is going to be a multi-fold impact on the management of prostate cancer and even the staging of prostate cancer as PSMA imaging moves we hope, into the United States and not just as a European platform in which to be performed. So, it's going to change, it's probably going to move staging of high-risk prostate cancer for each clinical state so that there will be what is now called high-risk localized disease. Some of those patients will be termed metastatic disease, the rising PSA population, some of those will be found to have metastatic disease. Already, it's been shown that the non-metastatic CRPC population is predominantly actually a metastatic population when subjects to molecular imaging with PSMA based imaging. So, our understanding of really where each patient is in his natural history is going to be different. And then we're gonna have a have to have a whole host of clinical trials moving forward to determine how to use this information to the patient's best benefit. That really hasn't been done yet. We don't know what the best treatment paradigm is, for a patient whose disease is most clearly manifest on a PSMA scan as opposed to standard imaging, we're going to have to resort all of that out in terms of who should be getting systemic therapy, who should be getting systemic and local therapy, who should be just beginning a focal treatment. All that work has yet to be done. We can only do it once we have the scan available to us as a tool in the United States.