Living with Advanced Prostate Cancer
Resources, expertise, and survivor support to help in the months & years after diagnosis

We understand that this is a difficult and often confusing time. After getting a diagnosis, it can be challenging to find a doctor and decide where to get treatment — and it’s easy to overlook some options when you are stressed.

If you are still in the process of putting together a team and deciding on treatments, we’ve put together some advice from experts on how to tackle the next steps.

This is a time when you should consider going to a multidisciplinary center so you can access many different specialists all in one place. This may help you make key treatment decisions.

As you go through the treatment process, it’s important to be aware of advances in the field and ask your doctor about anything that looks promising. There’s a lot of hope surrounding the treatment of advanced prostate cancer right now.

Some cancer cells may eventually adapt and become resistant to low testosterone levels. This phase is referred to as castration-resistant prostate cancer. This means that the cancer no longer responds to testosterone-lowering therapies.

In this case, treatment may include:

• Additional ADT
• Chemotherapy
• Immunotherapy
• Targeted therapies
• Radiopharmaceuticals (Radium-223)
• Pluvicto (a type of radiation therapy)

Pluvicto is a new, targeted treatment used in metastatic prostate cancer that has progressed despite treatment with other therapies such as hormone therapy and chemotherapy.

The treatment targets PSMA, a molecule predominantly found in prostate cancer cells. Pluvicto is absorbed by the prostate cancer cells and the radiation molecule in the drug, Lutetium-177, kills cancer cells by damaging their DNA.

Another new drug, Nubeqa (darolutamide) showed real promise in treating some advanced-stage prostate cancer patients when used in combination with chemotherapy and hormone suppression.

How a patient handles treatment for prostate cancer will depend a lot on what type of treatment they got and what condition their health was in before undergoing that treatment.

When prostate cancer has spread to other parts of the body, a doctor may suggest hormone therapy, chemotherapy, radiation, or a combination of these options.

All of these will come with their own potential side effects, and some — like sexual side effects and bladder control issues — can be especially hard to manage. Just know you’re not alone in learning how to control and cope with these side effects. There are resources available.

For people with advanced prostate cancer, genetic testing can provide clues about how to treat the disease. It can also reveal the cancer’s genetic tendency to behave in a certain way.

Genetic testing could be critical in helping doctors determine how to tailor a specific patient’s treatments in order to have the best results.

Genetic testing can also be helpful to your family members, since men with a family history of prostate cancer are considered to be at a higher risk of developing the disease and should consider screening at a younger age.

Physicians are often eager to discuss the medical aspect of cancer, but may be less available to help you cope with the stress and mental toll this disease can have.

There are many questions worth asking about stress management, emotional wellness, and how both can impact a patient during the cancer journey.

This is not always the easiest conversation to start, so we’ve provided resources to help you get the conversations about your emotional needs started.

Clinical trials give patients who may not be responding to typical treatments access to a bevy of new drugs that are currently being developed by pharmaceutical companies.

Some patients may have mixed feelings about being part of a trial, but for some, it’s the best option.

A lot of men feel ashamed or embarrassed after a prostate cancer diagnosis.

It’s important to understand it’s not your fault — and that experiencing some grief after a cancer diagnosis is completely normal. Some men may also be worried about the sexual side effects that they may experience due to prostate cancer treatment.

To help address these common feelings, we compiled advice from experts about learning to deal with vulnerability as well as difficult side effects.

There are inspiring survivor stories all around the cancer community — and we think these can help people living with the disease through some of their toughest moments.

The prostate cancer survivors featured below, some of whom you may recognize, share what their experience was like, how they learned to cope, and much more.

Integrative medicine can be really helpful both during and after cancer treatment as a way to mitigate certain side effects. Integrative medicine doesn’t seek to replace traditional treatments, but aims to pair them with holistic methods of healing.

These days, many cancer doctors support integrating other methods into patient care. Integrative methods blend things like diet and stress management with conventional medicine. This includes things like acupuncture, meditation, or even medical marijuana to ease pain and other side effects.

For some people, learning how to slow life down and live in the moment can have great benefits for mental health. Mindfulness is the feeling of being fully present in the moment. And when it comes to meditation, there’s a great deal of scientific research that shows it can be really helpful for people facing challenges.