New targeted therapies in hormone-refractory prostate cancer

Although the number of men presenting with metastatic prostate cancer has decreased significantly over the last several years, the death rate for those men is essentially unchanged. Effective treatments have not existed for Prostate cancer progressing after androgen deprivation therapy until recently. Docetaxel based chemotherapy has demonstrated to extend patient survival in two large randomized studies. These studies have provided the impetus to combine docetaxel with novel biologic drugs to further consolidate the gains in long-term outcome. With the arrival of new therapies such as epothilone analogues, small molecule receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, bone-targeted drugs, antisense oligonucleotides, antiangiogenics drugs and endothelin receptor antagonists, the future of prostate cancer therapy appears promising.