Jagarlamudi, Kiran Kumar
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Purpose: While most prostate cancer patients initially respond to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT), they will develop castration-resistance leading to progressing to castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Different treatment options are available for CRPC, including androgen receptor pathway inhibitors (ARPIs) and docetaxel (DOC). As tissue samples are difficult to access at this stage, blood-based analyses offer a more feasible approach. Therefore, we examined whether serum markers could potentially support treatment decisions in CRPC. Materials and Methods: Overall survival (OS) was examined in 208 CRPC patients treated with either ARPIs or DOC. Serum markers were chosen to reflect relevant tumor properties: serum thymidine kinase 1 (sTK1) as a proliferation-associated marker, TPS (tissue poly-peptide specific antigen) as an epithelial marker, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Results: A median OS (mOS) time of 19.6 (IQR: 9.5-35.4) months was observed for the whole cohort. Patients with sTK1high/TPShigh levels treated with ARPIs showed a mOS time of 6.8 (IQR: 4.2-9.5) months, compared to 14.6 (IQR: 8.7-48.9) months for patients receiving DOC (P = 0.024). Patients with sTK1low and/or TPSlow levels showed similar mOS times irrespective of treatment. Combinations of sTK1 and TPS with PSA yielded similar findings for ARPI-treated patients and longer OS in DOC-treated patients. Conclusions: This study introduces the concept of identifying proliferating carcinomas using a combination of the serum biomarkers sTK1 and TPS. The results suggest that sTK1high/TPShighCRPC patients derive more benefit from DOC, consistent with known mechanisms of drug action. Further randomized studies will be required to prove the therapy-predictive value of these tumor markers in CRPC. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Keywords
Castration-resistant prostate cancer; Thymidine kinase; TPS; Docetaxel; Enzalutamide; Abiraterone
Published in
Urologic Oncology: Seminars and Original Investigations
2025, volume: 43, number: 11, pages: 664e11-664e17
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Cancer and Oncology
Urology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urolonc.2025.06.018
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/144506