Dendreon’s prostate cancer vaccine significantly prolonged the overall survival among 500 men with advanced, metastic  prostate cancer  compared to a placebo, the company said Tuesday.

Results were “robust” and “unambiguous,” a spokesman said during today’s (Tues April 14) company broadcast conference call with biotech investment analysts.

“The successful outcome from the Phase 3 IMPACT study provides validation of the long-pursued goal of harnessing the human immune system against a patient’s own cancer,” Dendreon Chief Executive Mitchell Gold said in a statement.

“Survival is the gold standard outcome for oncology clinical trials, and overall survival was the primary endpoint of the IMPACT trial. The positive results from this landmark study provide confirmatory evidence demonstrating that treatment with PROVENGE may prolong survival,” Dendreon CEO Mitch Gold said.

The Seattle-based drugmaker said the phase III study of Provenge, known as IMPACT, met its primary endpoint with statistical significance. Details of the study are being withheld so that they can be presented at the American Urological Association’s Annual Meeting in Chicago on April 28.

Received from Halle Tecco, founder of YOGA BEAR, a non profit offering free yoga classes for cancer survivors:

Hello, my name is Halle and I’m the Executive Director of Yoga Bear, a non-profit that provides free yoga to cancer survivors across the US, through 125 partner yoga studios.  Most of our participants are female, and we’re trying to get more men involved! Since prostate cancer is so common for men, we wanted to reach out to your organization.  Could you please let your community know that we offer free passes to yoga studios for survivors interested in trying yoga?
Thank you,

http://www.yogabear.org/
blog.yogabear.org http://blog.yogabear.org

Recent stories on bisphosphonate side effects might be signaling the advent of a new, superior drug, but will Halozyme’s rHuPH20 enzyme solve the problem of jaw necrosis?

Drug development companies operate within the overall consumer culture. We all want better drugs, better everything. Generic Fosamax (alendronate) now costs just $4 at Wal-Mart, Kroger and other retail pharmacies. What might make right now a better than usual time to get word out to the masses that Fosamax carries some dreadful, if quite rare, risks?

Diane Wysowski of the FDA’s division of drug risk assessment says researchers should check into potential links between oral bisphosphonate drugs and cancer of the esophagus.

Merck’s oral osteoporosis drug Fosamax may carry a risk for esophageal cancer, Wysowski writes in a letter to January 1, 2009 New England Journal of Medicine.

Seven percent of adults and 19 percent of children taking chemotherapy drugs in outpatient clinics or at home were given the wrong dose or experienced other mistakes involving their medications, according to a new study led by Kathleen E. Walsh, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and published in the January 1, 2009 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Music “has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,” wrote playwright William Congreve, “To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.” But can it soothe those mired in the grief, confusion and pain of cancer diagnosis and treatment?

Music therapist Megan Gunnell at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center thinks so. She uses music to help heal cancer patients’ spirits as well as their bodies.

UM Music therapist Megan Gunnell

You can listen to one of her music therapy sessions. You’ll need QuickTime music player . If you don’t already have it installed on your computer, you can download it for Windows or Mac in a free version from Apple.

Mission Healthy Men is a campaign in Austria to motivate men to become as health-conscious as women and to get health check-ups, especially for prostate cancer.

Under the slogan “Prevention is the future” the campaign is fundraising among banks, corporations, drug companies and orchestral concert-goers, while aiming to impact health choices by regular guys who get their autos serviced at regular intervals — or did before the recession — yet ignore their own health.

Deaths and diagnoses for prostate and several other cancers fell between 2001 to 2005, the latest years for which data have been analyzed, according to reports this week by the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society.

Although overall cancer death rates dropped for the past 10 years, NCI says, this is the first time cancer incidence (the rate at which new cancers are diagnosed) has dropped along with overall death rates from cancers in men and women in most racial and ethnic groups.

Rhonda Fine
PhD ARNP

Many factors can adversely affect sexual performance. Physical disability illness, obesity, medications, aging, stress, grief, emotional distress and relationship conflicts may all at times contribute to sexual dysfunction.

Prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment may also contribute to sexual dysfunction. To help men and their partners cope with and manage sexual dysfunction, the Krongrad Institute has brought in Rhonda Fine, PhD, ARNP. Dr. Fine will head up the Institute’s efforts to support men and their sexual partners after prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Charles "Chuck" Maack

BY CHARLES (CHUCK) MAACK – Prostate Cancer Advocate

In opening: The capability to have an erection does not define what constitutes the title “Man.”

I’ve become exasperated reading of men claiming they are less a man because they are unable to get an erection or have lost libido/potency. “I’m less a man,” “I’m a eunuch,” “I’m a girly-man.”

Where in God’s name have such ridiculous thoughts come from? This, in my mind, is the perfect example of some men’s brains being enclosed within their penis rather than in their head.

I can agree that loss of capability for erection plus loss of libido are blows that strike at key capabilities associated with being a male.

But I am absolutely no less a man than I was through all the decades of my life before discovery of the prostate cancer made it necessary for me to take medical treatments that resulted in my loss of libido/potency/erection.