Oliver Sartor, MD, medical director, Tulane Cancer Center, discusses a new trial concept that seeks to combine the radiopharmaceutical radium-223 chloride (Alpharadin) and the immunotherapy sipuleucel-T (Provenge), for men with castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Sartor explains the rationale behind this combination was based on the ability of radium-223 to release antigens, which makes the cancer cells more susceptible to immunotherapies, such as sipuleucel-T. The initial trial will likely be a small proof of concept study to gather evidence on the efficacy of the combination before it is tested in a larger population.

The companies that develop sipuleucel-T (Dendreon Corporation) and radium-223 (Bayer Pharma AG) have already agreed to participate in the trial.