2022 News Archive - UCLA Institute of Urologic Oncology

November 29, 2022 - UroToday/GU Onc Today provides expert commentary from Dr. Matthew B. Rettig, medical director of the Prostate Cancer Program at the Institute of Urologic Oncology at UCLA and Dr. Isla P. Garraway, associate professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and member of the Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.

November 28, 2022 - Oncology Tube provides expert commentary from Dr. Amar Kishan, member of the UCLA IUO and the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and assistant professor and chief of genitourinary oncology service at UCLA, about the MIRAGE phase 3 clinical trial.

November 10, 2022 - New Approach to Bladder Cancer - A study of 82 patients with a high-risk form of bladder cancer, led by UCLA, shows that 71% of the patients, all of whom had not responded to typical therapy, responded to an experimental immunotherapy drug called NAI, which works by activating the body’s natural killer cells. After two years, 90% of the patients who responded to the drug avoided surgery to remove the bladder and there were no deaths from bladder cancer among all 82 patients. The study was funded by ImmunityBio and the results appear in NEJM Evidence. Dr. Karim Chamie,  Associate Professor of UCLA Urology, is the first author.

October 21, 2022 - The UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center reports on a new UCLA study, led by Dr. Amir Kishan, vice-chair of Clinical and Translational Research at UCLA, that shows that it is almost universally optimal for men to begin androgen deprivation therapy when starting radiation therapy for prostate cancer.

July 26, 2022 - UCLA researchers awarded Department of Defense funding to improve prostate cancer treatment outcomes. A team led by Paul C Boutros, PhD, MBA, professor in the departments of human genetics and urology and interim vice dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center's Cancer Data Science program, has been awarded over $2.7 million in research funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to support two projects that will use computational models and DNA sequencing to improve prostate cancer treatment outcomes. The project is co-led by Huihui Ye, MD, MS, chief of Genitourinary Pathology at UCLA. The 3-year grants go into effect July 2022.  UCLA Health Newsroom >

February 16, 2022 - Dr. Amar Kishan, MD, lead author – An analysis by Amar Kishan, MD, indicates that MRI-guided radiotherapy appears to lead to fewer side effects from treatment for prostate cancer.  UCLA Health News >

January 20, 2022 - Dr. Amar Kishan, MD, lead author – “ UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center meta-analysis may help guide treatment planning for patients with high-risk prostate cancer.  “An international effort consisting of a consortium of 16 research centers in collaboration with two international cooperative trial groups found that patients receiving high-dose external beam radiation therapy alone may benefit from androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) lasting longer than 18 months, while those with external beam radiation therapy and a brachytherapy boost – the implantation of radioactive seeds to deliver a higher dose to the prostate – may be optimally managed with 18 months of ADT or possible less.  Results are published in the Jan. 20 issue of JAMA Oncology.”  UCLA Health News >

January 17, 2022 – Dr. Amar Kishan, MD, lead author – “A new meta-analysis of randomized, controlled clinical trials provides strong support for adding androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to definitive radiotherapy (RT) for the treatment of prostate cancer, projecting that doing so would prevent one cancer from metastasizing for every 10 to 15 men treated.  The analysis, published in Lancet Oncology, was conducted through the Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials in Cancer of the Prostate (MARCAP) Consortium, a group formed in 2020 to serve as a data repository from international trial groups.  The MARCAP consortium was co-founded by Dr. Amar Kishan….”  UCLA Health News >

January 14, 2022 – Dr. Christopher Saigal - Prostate cancer ADT has fewer cardiovascular risks than expected per Renal & Urology News – “Christopher Saigal, MD, MPH, professor and vice chair of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles, said “this study will need to be validated because it is uncertain how accurately this one individual health system captured all of the MACE events in this patient population.”

January 13, 2022 – Dr. Amar Kishan – Genetics predicts the toxic side effects to prostate cancer radiotherapy – “For the first time, researchers….used prostate cancer patients' DNA to create a model that appears to predict who will have side effects from radiation.  ‘One of the biggest goals of our research program is to try to minimize toxicity and improve quality of life after treatment,'” said Dr. Kishan, lead author and vice chair of clinical and lational research in the Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA. Published in Radiotherapy and Oncology.  UCLA Health News >

January 7, 2022 – Dr. Amar Kishan – UCLA Health researcher receives $1.1 million grant to help improve radiation treatment of prostate cancer – The grant from the Department of Defense spearheads a project exploring basic science concepts in the treatment of prostate cancer with the project anticipated to have a major impact by improving radiotherapy delivery technology and enhancing understanding of underlying biology of radioresistance.  With the new grant, Dr. Kishan – under the mentorship of fellow IUO Member Dr. Paul Boutros, director of Cancer Data Science at UCLA – “…will evaluate two separate-but-linked hypotheses.  The first is that by allowing real-time adjustments of radiotherapy dose delivery based on changes in the shape and position of the urethra and trigone, clinicians can significantly decrease the proportion of patients in whom these structures are overdosed during radiotherapy.  The second hypothesis is that by evaluating the genome of the patients with viable or visible tumor two years after radiotherapy, the group will identify a significant increase in markers of aggressiveness.”   UCLA Health News >  Grant information: W81XWH-22-1-0044 / Optimizing Radiation Delivery and Dissecting the Response to Radiation for Patients with Localized Prostate Cancer.