Informed Prostate Cancer Patient Support

Second PSMA PET Scan Finds Hidden Prostate Cancer in 56% of Patients Informed Prostate Cancer Support Group  •  Imaging & Recurrence A patient-friendly look at new evidence that a repeat PSMA PET scan is often not redundant — and how to think about the numbers. Bottom Line Up Front If your PSA is climbing after surgery or radiation but your first PSMA PET scan came back "negative," that scan is a snapshot in time — not a verdict. In a new study of 210 men whose first scan showed nothing, a second PSMA PET scan later found cancer in 56% of them , and the new information changed the treatment plan for nearly half . The men most likely to benefit had a higher PSA or a PSA that doubled in under 12 months . The practical message: a single clear scan doesn't close the book. Keep tracking your PSA, and talk with your care team about the right time to look again. What the researchers found The study was published in the July 2026 issue of The ...

Why the digital rectal exam fails prostate cancer screening IPCSG Newsletter · Screening & Early Detection The gloved-finger prostate check is quietly disappearing from routine screening — and the data explain why. An IPCSG patient-education review · broadly sourced from clinical trials, meta-analyses, and official guideline releases Bottom Line Up Front For decades the digital rectal exam (DRE) — the doctor's gloved-finger check — was a standard part of a prostate check-up. Large, modern studies now show it is a poor stand-alone screening test : it misses most early cancers, and adding it to a PSA blood test does not improve detection. In Germany's PROBASE trial, DRE performed on 6,537 men aged 45 flagged 57 for biopsy but confirmed cancer in only 3 — roughly 1 in 2,000 . A pooled analysis of tens of thousands of men found DRE's "positive-test-means-cancer" rate is no better than PSA's, with no bonus from combining the tw...

Effect of [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET-CT in the diagnosis of prostate cancer in men with equivocal or clinically high-risk non-suspicious findings on multiparametric MRI (PRIMARY2): a multicentre, non-inferiority, phase 3, randomised controlled trial - The Lancet Oncology Informed Prostate Cancer Support Group · Research Brief PRIMARY2, the first randomized trial of PSMA PET before biopsy, reshapes the workup for men with a worrisome PSA but a reassuring MRI. for the IPCSG Newsletter Filed July 2026 Reading time ~11 min BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front For biopsy-naïve men who have a high-risk PSA picture but a non-suspicious or borderline MRI , adding a gallium-68 PSMA PET-CT scan cut the number needing a prostate biopsy roughly in half — without missing meaningful cancers. In the phase 3 PRIMARY2 trial (660 men, seven Australian hospitals): 49% avoided biopsy entirely when the PSMA scan was clean, and stayed on PSA monit...

Companion Explainer · Immuno-Oncology Basics How Chemotherapy Talks to the Immune System Informed Prostate Cancer Support Group (IPCSG) Newsletter · Background piece for members BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front Chemotherapy is cytotoxic — it is, in plain terms, a controlled poison. So it seems backwards that modern regimens increasingly pair it with immune therapies that depend on a healthy immune system. The resolution is that a cytotoxic drug, given at the right dose and the right time, can help an immune attack in three ways: it clears away the cells that suppress immunity, it makes cancer cells easier for immune cells to recognize, and (for some drugs) it opens biological "space" for therapeutic immune cells to expand. The same drug can also interfere — if the dose is too high or badly timed, it wipes out the very immune cells you are counting on. The whole game is dose and sequence, not poison versus medicine. The apparent contradiction For decades, che...

Radioligand therapy in combination with CAR T cells overcomes the heterogeneous immunosuppressive prostate tumor microenvironment | bioRxiv Informed Prostate Cancer Support Group (IPCSG) Newsletter · Research summary prepared for members BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front A new laboratory study from the City of Hope / USC / UCLA group led by Saul Priceman, PhD, reports that giving PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy (RLT) — the same class of drug as FDA-approved Pluvicto ( 177 Lu-PSMA-617) — before infusing PSCA-CAR T cells markedly improved tumor control and survival in mouse models of prostate cancer, well beyond either treatment alone. The RLT appears to act as an “immune primer,” reshaping the hostile tumor environment so the engineered T cells can do their job, while a second radiation target (PSCA vs. PSMA) helps cover tumors that shed one antigen. An alpha-emitting cousin, actinium-225 ( 225 Ac-PSMA-617) , showed similar benefit at much lower doses. Important: This is a...