My New York Minute

Whether newly-diagnosed or further along in the journey of advanced disease, this new video from Movember gives hope to prostate cancer patients and families. The folks at Movember never cease to amaze me. First they manage to turn the act of growing mustaches into funding  for medical research. Then they turn it into a global [...]

Sunday’s New York Times Headline Underscores the Promise of Precision Oncology Sitting on the inside of the research enterprise, it can be easy to forget that many folks might not have heard of, much less understand, precision medicine or precision oncology. In the simplest of terms, the ability to map the genes of cancer patients [...]

Kenneth May, Jr., MD, PhD, writes about his call and transition from big city practice to a more remote environment.  Cancer patients often talk about how the cancer journey changes their lives, but I doubt many would consider what motivated a noted physician-scientist to make a major change and move westward, to a locale where [...]

Twelve patients and survivors share their experiences in a unique documentary about living with prostate cancer. I have always been proud to work where I do and honored to meet and serve so many patients and families. Now, I am pleased to announce the release of Men’s Retreat, a first-of-its kind documentary that chronicles many of [...]

IBM’s Wiz Brain Supercomputer Comes of Age to Serve Patients. Aficionados of Jeopardy will remember watching in awe as IBM’s Watson kicked the proverbial pants off the show’s best performing candidates. His margin of error was the lowest of any participant I had ever seen. Simply put, he is what educators would call a life [...]

With progress in new biomarkers, we will see more clarity–for patients and physicians alike–in making better informed decisions. The more we understand about a patient’s specific variety of prostate cancer and its propensity to be aggressive or not, the better his treatment will be. It’s the promise of precision medicine. It’s the key to eliminating [...]

The tenth study of its kind shows that male pattern baldness may be an indicator for enlarged prostate and prostate cancer. When my surgeon first told me that my disease was metastatic and outlined the list of negative side effects that could go along with my androgen deprivation therapy (the blockage of testosterone production), I [...]

My update and apologies to all who have expressed concern… To all my friends and readers, I owe you a BIG apology. My treatment and re-entry to work have had me all consumed since my last posting. As an update, I was discharged from my retreat in the hospital after one week and am now [...]

As I was saying, advances in treatment for patients continue to accelerate… This just in from Bloomberg News: Johnson & Johnson has been granted approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Zytiga (abiraterone) to be used earlier in the patient treatment, prior to chemotherapy. The drug, taken in pill form, was originally approved [...]

Advances in PET scan imaging may soon enable clinicians to see and treat metastatic prostate cancer lesions earlier and with greater precision.  Ask any fellow patient who has been diagnosed with advanced metastatic disease what their biggest fear is and the answer is simple: recurrence. Of course, the quarterly or six-month PSA test–which comes with [...]