Integrating stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and systemic treatments in oligoprogressive prostate cancer: new evidence from the literature

Recent findings from literature evidenced that metastatic prostate cancer often shows heterogeneous response to therapy, with persistent sensibility to systemic treatments after biochemical, clinical, or radiographic progression. This highlights the advantage of integrated approaches in which local ablative treatments (e.g., stereotactic body radiation therapy) could prolong clinical benefit of systemic therapies beyond oligo-progression. Of course, development of predictive biomarker could be helpful in order to select patients who could much benefit from this treatment strategy. Circulating tumor cell detection and analysis could also have a crucial role in this field. A joint effort of two prospective ongoing trials (ARTO, clinical.gov identifier NCT03449719 and PRIMERA, clinical.gov identifier NCT04188275) might help to improve criteria to select patients in whom a local ablative approach might confer significant benefit. In this commentary, we summarized recent data from literature to support this thesis.