Metastatic, or late-stage, prostate cancer can occur if the cancer spreads to other parts of the body after treatment as well as in people who are not aware they have cancer until it has spread. New advances in treatment are providing new options for people with metastatic prostate cancer. Mary K. O’Keeffe, MD, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Long Island School of Medicine and medical oncologist at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses currently available treatments with SurvivorNet. These treatments include PARP inhibitors, which kill cancer cells by targeting a DNA repair protein, and androgen deprivation therapy, which decreases the hormone testosterone.

“Prostate cancer feeds off testosterone,” Dr. O’Keeffe says. “When you lower testosterone with androgen deprivation therapy, it’s no longer feeding the cancer.”

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