William D. Figg, PharmD

Advances in science have prolonged the average life span, and people are living relatively longer than before. Nevertheless, we have much to achieve to prolong the "healthy life span." People in old age suffer from multiple chronic ailments, and many of them succumb to death by heart disease, cancer, or stroke.[1] To survive these diseases, patients continuously depend on concurrent multiple medications-also referred to as polypharmacy-and with that comes the responsibility of appropriate selection, administration, and monitoring of therapeutic modalities.

Metastatic hormone-resistant prostate cancer has proven largely resistant to cytotoxic therapy. Since 2004, docetaxel (Taxotere)/prednisone has become the standard chemotherapy used to treat advanced hormone-resistant prostate cancer. However, the survival advantage is modest and a significant number of patients do not respond to chemotherapy. It is hoped that an increased understanding of the mechanisms underlying the progression of prostate cancer will lead to new treatment modalities. With the growing number of biologic and targeted agents under development, the potential armamentarium of prostate cancer treatments is steadily growing. However, none of the new treatment modalities has yet been shown to be more effective than standard treatments. This article will provide an overview of targeted or innovative therapies in the treatment of prostate cancer.