A study looking at a new way to give melphalan chemotherapy for prostate cancer that can no longer be treated with hormone therapy (PR-2006-03)

This study used stem cells to allow doctors to give melphalan (Alkeran) chemotherapy twice as often for prostate cancer.

Doctors often use hormone therapy to treat prostate cancer. This treatment usually works well for a few years. But the hormone therapy may stop working so well after a time. Doctors may then use other treatments, such as chemotherapy.

Doctors have used melphalan to treat prostate cancer, but it causes a drop in blood cells, limiting the chemotherapy dose men can have. In this study men had their own stem cells through a drip after chemotherapy. This should have helped their blood cell counts to recover more quickly. So doctors should have been able to safely give the melphalan twice as often as before. They also wanted to see if hormone therapy would start working again after having melphalan. The aims of this study were to

• Find out the highest dose of melphalan that men could have with a transplant of stem cells

• See how well a higher dose of melphalan followed by stem cells worked for hormone resistant prostate cancer

• Understand more about any side effects

• Study prostate cancer cells from blood samples to understand what makes them respond to hormone therapy again