The Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health ap­proved the in­tro­duc­tion of Abi­raterone Ac­etate to the coun­try, the first oral­ly ad­min­is­tered med­ica­tion for the treat­ment of pa­tients with metasta­t­ic cas­tra­tion-re­sis­tant prostate can­cer.Clin­i­cal tri­als have demon­strat­ed that this new ther­a­peu­tic re­source for the stan­dard ther­a­py of pa­tients with hor­mone-re­sis­tant tu­mors re­duces the risk of death by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 per cent. Abi­raterone Ac­etate is avail­able in T&T un­der the trade­mark Zyti­ga�.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Can­cer Reg­istry, prostate can­cer leads can­cer sta­tis­tics in the T&T pop­u­la­tion with 22 per cent of all cas­es. Among males, prostate can­cer ac­count­ed for 42 per cent of all new cas­es of can­cer. World­wide, prostate can­cer is the sec­ond type of can­cer most fre­quent­ly di­ag­nosed in men, and the fifth type over­all. Near 1.1 mil­lion new cas­es of prostate can­cer were di­ag­nosed world­wide in 2012, and more than 300,000 men died be­cause of the dis­ease.

This type of can­cer is the re­sult of the ma­lig­nant trans­for­ma­tion of cer­tain cells of the prostate, a gland lo­cat­ed un­der­neath the uri­nary blad­der in men, one of the func­tions of which is to pro­duce a part of the sem­i­nal flu­id. Al­though a slow­ly de­vel­op­ing dis­ease, some prostate tu­mours may be very ag­gres­sive and ex­tend quick­ly to in­vade oth­er or­gans.

Abi­raterone Ac­etate is ad­min­is­tered oral­ly as a sin­gle dai­ly dose, which pre­vents an­dro­gens from be­ing pro­duced at their three sources: Testes, adren­al glands, and the tu­mour it­self, through the strong block of the CYP 17 en­zyme. An­dro­gens are hor­mones that pro­mote male de­vel­op­ment and sex­u­al fea­tures, and prostate can­cer cells have been shown to need them to grow.

"Abi­raterone Ac­etate is an an­dro­gen syn­the­sis in­hibitor (testos­terone) treat­ment that re­duces the risk of death by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 per cent of pa­tients al­ready treat­ed with hor­mone ther­a­py and chemother­a­py. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of all pa­tients with prostate can­cer progress to a se­vere stage of the dis­ease and could now ben­e­fit from this new ther­a­peu­tic al­ter­na­tive," said Dr Car­men Mar­tinez, med­ical di­rec­tor of Janssen for Venezuela, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

One of the most salient as­pects of Abi­raterone Ac­etate that dis­tin­guish­es it from oth­er on­co­log­ic treat­ments is that it pos­sess­es a nov­el mech­a­nism of ac­tion, with a ben­e­fit as to the over­all sur­vival rate, and a tol­er­a­ble tox­i­c­i­ty pro­file.