To that end, Small and colleagues at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA are enrolling 100 men with hormone independent disease for a trial to test which agent, estrogen or PC-SPES, works better to slow the disease. Once one therapy stops producing PSA declines, the patient will be switched to the other agent. Patients will be enrolled for a year. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer, excluding nonmelanoma skin cancers, in American men, according to the American Cancer Society. The organization estimates that 180,400 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men, exceeded only by lung cancer.
About 31,900 men in the United States will die of this disease during 2000, according to the American Cancer Society.