Dr. Beltran on the Need to Identify Non–AR Targets in Prostate Cancer

Himisha Beltran, MD, associate professor of medicine and physician in the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology and the Division of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, discusses the need to identify non–androgen receptor (AR) targets in prostate cancer.

Ongoing research efforts are attempting to identify druggable targets for patients with non–AR-driven prostate cancers, such as neuroendocrine prostate cancer, Beltran says.

Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is a histologic variant of prostate cancer that tends to occur in late-stage disease when prostate adenocarcinoma transforms to small-cell neuroendocrine prostate cancer, explains Beltran.

Moreover, neuroendocrine prostate cancer is biologically distinguishable and harbors many potentially targetable alterations, Beltran says.

As such, the field should move toward developing clinical trials specific to non–AR-driven prostate cancer, concludes Beltran.