Marina del Rey Prostate Cancer Specialist Says New Treatment Offers Hope for Patients

September is national Prostate Cancer Awareness Month and a Marina del Rey specialist in fighting the disease said a new treatment for prostate cancer has given hope to some patients with advanced forms of the cancer.

President Barack Obama in a proclamation earlier this month noted that prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men in the United States, second only to lung cancer. Prostate cancer also has been in the news with the recent announcement by former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007 while he was still coaching. Bowden, who was diagnosed at age 77, made his announcement via On the Line, a prostate cancer awareness group that uses sports figures to encourage discussion about prostate cancer.

Dr. Mark Scholz, medical director of Prostate Oncology Specialists in Marina del Rey, said research over the past 15 years has led to new treatments for cancer, including a drug called Provenge that activates the body's own immune system to combat cancer cells.

Provenge, which is manufactured by Seattle-based biotechnology firm Dendreon, has been prescribed mostly to elderly men with advanced stages of prostate cancer. The average life extension has been 20 to 25 percent over what would've been expected for patients treated with Provenge, Scholz said. Men who were selected for clinical trials before Provenge gained Food and Drug Administration approval had an average survival of about four months, but most of the patients were quite ill and some didn't respond to the treatment while others gained several more years of life, Scholz said.

Provenge works by activating the body's own immune system. Patients have their blood removed and it is taken to a nearby facility in Seal Beach where immunization cells are exposed to cancer markers and injected with hormones to trigger activation. The revved up immunization cells are then reinserted a few days later into the bloodstream. The treatment requires three injections over a six-week period and costs roughly $93,000.

Scholz said he has been treating a few patients a month and roughly 30 patients have undergone the Provenge treatment.

Unlike chemotherapy, which often causes significant side effects such as hair loss, fatigue and loss of taste for food, Provenge only has mild side effects such as chills, dizziness and headaches.

"It's been a delightfuly uneventful thing," Scholz said of the treatment. "A lot of these men are elderly and frail. It's such a delight to give them something that doesn't make them feel tired or sick."

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, but it's also the least deadly of all the cancers, Scholz said. Scholz, who grew up in Costa Mesa, said he decided to specialize in prostate cancer after doing general medical oncology treating breast, colon and other forms of cancer following his internship and residency at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

There are 200,000 new cases of prostate cancer each year in the United States and about 2 million survivors, so Scholz said he decided to focus on it to carve out a niche, remain in the Los Angeles area and to avoid the "war zone" and stress of dealing with more deadly forms of cancer.

He became the co-founder of the Prostate Cancer Research Institute about 15 years ago, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting research and sharing information on prostate cancer.

Scholz said the top trend in prostate cancer research is "active surveillance," which is holding off on immediate treatment for cancer. The trend is an important one because men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer often have hasty surgery or undgergo unnecessary chemotherapy, Scholz said.

"A little speck of prostate cancer in the past meant surgery or radiation and many of these men never needed treatment," Scholz said. "The men are really happy becaue the surgery usually makes men impotent."

Scholz co-authored a 2010 book called "Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers" aimed at men who have recently found out they have prostate cancer. The book's central theme is that there are certain types of prostate cancer that don't require treatment and men should be cautious before undergoing radical treatments.

Provenge, otherwise known as Sipuleucel-T, was approved by the FDA in April 2010 and its costs is covered by Medicare. Dendreon recently announced that it was laying off 500 employees, about one-quarter of its workforce, primarily in the manufacturing area.

A Dendreon spokesperson said Wednesday that the company plans on keeping its manufacturing facilities in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Atlanta staffed enough "to respond rapidly to a more robust growth rate."

Scholz said said he hasn't had any problems accessing Provenge and Dendreon has been making sure the treatments arrive on time.

Scholz also said that he is not employed by Dendreon and the company only has asked him to speak to physicians about Provenge about five months ago in Newport Beach.

Dendreon ended Wednesday trading on the NASDAQ at $10.96 per share and has a 52-week high of $43.96 per share.

Scholz urged men who are concerned about the threat of prostate cancer to change their diet.

"A low-fat, veggie based diet does lower the risk for prostate cancer," he said.

In China, men who don't have access to rich, fatty meals have prostate rates 17 times lower than men in the United States, but when they move to the United States they start getting prostate cancer, Scholz said.

He also urged men who take the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test for prostate cancer to educate themselves if the PSA is high. When the PSA is high, the usual policy is for the patient to see an urologist who wlll perform a needle biopsy to check for prostate cancer. It can be traumatic to undergo a biopsy and then have to wait a few days to find out whether or not you have cancer, Scholz said.

"Once men get told they have cancer, they go into brain-freeze, they're scared and they can't think straight," Scholz said. "They should not just rush into a biopsy."

He urged men to undergo a PSA test at age 40, again at 45, again at 50, if previous tests were low, and then each year after 50.