By Howard Wolinsky
Active Surveillance Patients International (ASPI) is premiering two segments of the AS 101 series aimed at educating patients about genetic counseling and Active Surveillance (AS).
The free program will be at 12 p.m. Eastern, Saturday, March 25. Click to register.
A Q&A session will follow the videos.
AS 101, like an introductory college course, was launched in 2022 to explain in short video chats the basics of active surveillance for the newly diagnosed, those in the “gray zone” with rising PSAs but no biopsy confirming the presence of low-risk cancer, and also patients who have been on AS for a while but are looking for a refresher course.
Each session features prostate cancer patient, Larry White, and his well-informed wife, Nancy White, speaking with top experts about questions they have about AS issues in an office visit setting.
(Justin Lorentz, genetic counselor.)
The Whites discuss genetics and genomics from a patient point of view with Justin Lorentz, MSc, a certified genetic counselor and lead of Sunnybrook Health Science Centre’s Male Oncology Research and Education (MORE) Program, a registry for men with hereditary cancer. Lorentz, who is an instructor at the University of Toronto, is also a consultant to the Promise study, which offers free DNA testing to U.S. men with prostate cancer.
***
The full series to date of AS 101 is available at: https://aspatients.org/a-s-101/
Episode 1. “Rising PSA,” featured Dr. Stephen Spann, a family doctor and founding dean of the University of Houston College of Medicine, who recommended that Larry, who has a rising PSA blood level, and his wife, Nancy, see a urologist.
Episode 2. “The Urologist” focuses on the Whites’ first visit with a urologist, Dr. Laurence Klotz, of the University of Toronto, the father of active surveillance.
Episode 3. “Active Surveillance.” Dr. Klotz recommends Active Surveillance for Larry White.
Episodes 4 & 5, “Counseling Before DNA Testing” and “Genetic Results.” The video focuses on Larry White’s inherited DNA to determine if he needs to take special steps.
Additional programs are coming with uropathologist Dr. Jonathan Epstein, of Johns Hopkins, on biopsies and Dr. Andreas Correa, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, on imaging prostate cancer.
AS 101 is a project of the AS Coalition, which includes ASPI, the AS Virtual Support Group from AnCan, the Prostate Cancer Research Institute, Prostate Cancer Support Canada, and TheActiveSurveillor.com newsletter.
Special thanks to Alex and Peter Scholz and their team at PCRI, who recorded and edited the program.
The Prostate Cancer Research Institute is holding the virtual version of its mid-year meeting on Saturday March 25 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific.
Register here.
These sessions are focused on more advanced prostate cancer. But patients with low-risk prostate cancer may find the session on PSMA PET scanning of interest, though this technology is not yet available to us. Also, the Q&A with Drs. Mark Scholz and Mark Moyad are always worth attending.
Check out Gleasson 3+4 patient Richard May’s experience with PSMA PET:
VIRTUAL | SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2023 (Pacific Time)
8:30am - 9:00am / Mark Moyad, MD, MPH / Opening Remarks
9:00am - 11:00am / Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatments / Elisabeth Heath, MD
11:00am - 12:30pm / Prostate Cancer Imaging / Johannes Czernin, MD
12:30pm - 1:00pm / Lunch Session with Matthew Rettig, MD
1:00pm - 3:00pm / Proton Therapy / Carl Rossi, MD
3:00pm - 4:30pm / Q+A / Mark Moyad, MD + Mark Scholz, MD
4:30pm - 4:45pm / Closing Remarks
PCRI in September will focus on AS.
US, UK Researchers Simultaneously Develop New Tests to Detect PCa
Dark Daily reports:
“Within weeks of each other, different research teams in the US and UK published findings of their respective efforts to develop a better, more accurate clinical laboratory prostate cancer test. With cancer being a leading cause of death among men—second only to heart disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—new diagnostics to identify prostate cancer would be a boon to precision medicine treatments for the deadly disease and could save many lives.
“Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England, were working to improve the accuracy of the widely-used and accepted prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. By contrast, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Cancer in Los Angeles, pursued a new liquid biopsy approach to identifying prostate cancer that uses nanotechnology.
“Thus, these are two different pathways toward the goal of achieving earlier, more accurate diagnosis of prostate cancer, the holy grail of prostate cancer diagnosis.”
For more information, click here.