Usually, the male hormone testosterone makes prostate cancer cells grow. Lowering testosterone usually stops the growth of prostate cancer. However, after a period of time without testosterone, prostate cancer cells learn to grow again. You are able to join this trial because your prostate cancer is growing even though you have very low levels of testosterone. Studies have shown that high doses of testosterone, in this situation, can cause prostate cancer cells to stop growing. The investigators did a study several years ago in which the investigators gave high doses of testosterone to patients such as yourself. The investigators showed that giving testosterone in this situation was safe. The investigators also showed that the investigators could, in some cases, make the PSA go down using high-dose testosterone. The investigators believe that they can improve this type of treatment by combining testosterone with another drug called dutasteride. Dutasteride is another type of hormone. It should make testosterone levels rise. The investigators believe that combination of dutasteride and testosterone will be more a more powerful regimen against your cancer than testosterone alone.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
NA
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
6
Patients will be treated with dutasteride 3.5 mg once daily (oral administration). To avoid rapid conversion of testosterone to DHT in case 5α-reductase is not adequately inhibited during the first few days of concurrent treatment with dutasteride and testosterone, daily dutasteride treatment will be initiated 7 days prior to testosterone initiation. Patients will receive AndroGel® at the dose of 15 g (3 times the standard replacement dose for hypogonadism) once daily (topical administration), starting on Day 8 and continuing for 12 weeks (or until disease progression or withdrawal from the study).
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
New York, New York, United States
determine anti-tumor effects of the combination of testosterone + dutasteride in pts with castration-resistant prostate ca, as indicated by the proportion of pts remaining alive & progression free
Time frame: 12 weeks from the start of testosterone treatment
To explore the association between AR expression in CRPC, as determined at baseline separately by AR FISH (performed on CTCs) and by 18F-FDHT uptake on PET scan, and progression free survival to the combination of testosterone plus dutasteride.
Time frame: 12 weeks
To correlate post-treatment changes in CTCs and FDG and FDHT PET scans with post-treatment alterations in PSA and standard CT (or MRI) and bone scans.
Time frame: post treatment
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