Radio IMmunoStimulant RIMS Conjugate for the Treatment of Castrate Resistant Prostate Cancer
Project Abstract:
Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death with 1 in 10 men diagnosed in their lifetime and 1 in 41 dying from the disease When diagnosed early there is a good survival rate unfortunately the disease often progresses to castrate resistant prostate cancer CRPC and left untreated will progress to a metastatic form mCRPC in up to 50 of cases for which there is no cure The prostatespecific membrane antigen PSMA is an attractive target for this indication as it is highly expressed in poorly differentiated metastatic and hormonerefractoryrefractory adenocarcinomas This has been leveraged in clinical trials using the radiotherapeutic 117Lu PSMA617 Unfortunately 30 of these patients are nonresponders with the major contributors being tumor heterogeneity and low PSMA expression Additionally in patients that do respond the disease will eventually reemerge and be refractory to all current treatments We propose to develop a novel treatment paradigm that combines the cytotoxic benefits of a radionuclide with an immunostimulant to illicit a long term adaptive immune response This will rescue the non responder patient population and provide enhanced clinical outcomes in the remaining patient population
