WINSTON-SALEM, NC - The first patient at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center to receive a new drug therapy for late-stage prostate cancer recently completed his final treatment.
Tony Williamson, 61, of Winston-Salem, received six doses of Pluvicto, a radiopharmaceutical drug designed to target an advanced form of disease. The precision medicine therapy releases radiation to target and kill local and metastatic prostate cancer cells, slowing the disease but not curing it.
Williamson’s stage 4 cancer was found in 2020 after a fall that required surgery on his leg. “They gave me six months to live. I said, ‘Ain’t no way! I’ve got too much to do.’”
He has been battling the cancer for four years and exhausted treatment options such as radiation and chemotherapy. He wasn’t a candidate for a prostatectomy to remove the prostate because of the advanced state of disease.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men, with Black men like Williamson at a higher risk of developing and dying from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pluvicto was approved in 2022 by the Food and Drug Administration. In late 2023, when enough doses became available, Williamson was Novant Health Cancer Institute’s first patient to receive it. To be eligible, patients must have undergone chemo specifically for prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, as Williamson had.
Dr. Tim Collins of Novant Health Cancer Institute – Forsyth said Pluvicto is now an additional option for when standard therapies are not working for patients. “For somebody who has been through all those treatments, this represents an entirely new type of treatment,” he said. “It’s not a cure, but it slows the spread and can provide better quality of life.”
Williamson’s Pluvicto treatment was administered through the new theranostics program at Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, which offers a team approach. Collins and other oncologists refer eligible patients to radiologist/nuclear medicine physician Dr. Gbenga Shogbesan, the medical director of molecular imaging and theranostics.
Theranostics is the process of using imaging to diagnose cancer and then injecting radiation-producing agents to directly treat it. Shogbesan interprets PET-CT scans for PSMA to assess the spread of disease and determine if the patient will benefit from treatment with Pluvicto. Oncologists use blood tests to check PSA levels and determine whether cancer cells are growing.
During his treatment, Williamson reported feeling tired, though his pain has eased, and his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels improved with each dose. Prior to the treatment, his PSA was 496 – it’s now at 10.7. PSA levels of 4.0 and lower are considered normal.
Research is underway to determine whether the drug can become the standard of care for certain prostate cancer patients. At Forsyth Medical Center, many more patients are now in the process of being treated.
Williamson says he’s grateful that the drug came into his life at the right time. “I have hope in this medicine,” he said. “It has really changed me. Most of my pain is gone.”
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