For more advanced stages of prostate cancer, chemotherapy, which uses drugs to kill cancer cells, may be taken by pill or administered intravenously. Through chemotherapy, drugs enter the bloodstream, travel through the body and can kill cancer cells outside the prostate. Chemotherapy has not yet been proven effective as a treatment for prostate cancer, but clinical trials are underway that can find more effective drugs. Hormone therapy involves the use of hormones to suppress the production of male hormones by the testicles. This stops prostate cancer cells from growing.
Male hormones can actually help the prostate cancer grow.
Female hormones, or drugs called luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone or LHRH, which decrease the amount of male hormones made, may be given. Men with widely spread prostate cancer usually experience great improvement in symptoms and signs. In some cases in men with advanced prostate cancer, surgery is performed to remove the testicles to stop them from making testosterone. Side effects of hormone therapy include growth of breast tissue, hot flashes, impaired sexual function and loss of desire for sex. UPCI investigators are world-renowned for their work in clinical and basic research on cancer.