Prostate cancer: Prize for Würzburg study

Prostate carcinoma is a malignant tumour that mainly affects older men. If it is recognised early, it is easily treatable. At an advanced stage, however, there are often only a few effective treatment options available.

A comparatively new treatment is PSMA-directed radioligand therapy (PSMA-RLT). This involves the targeted treatment of tumour cells with a radioactive substance.

But: "In large clinical studies on this modern cancer therapy, older patients have hardly been considered so far," says Professor Hubert Kübler, Director of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Urology and Paediatric Urology at the University Hospital of Würzburg (UKW).

Therapy can also help people over 75

This is why he, his team and the UKW Nuclear Medicine Department analysed the benefits and tolerability of PSMA-directed radioligand therapy in a retrospective evaluation of a total of 56 patients aged 75 and over.

The study shows that this therapy can also be effective and well tolerated in older patients, some of whom have received multiple prior treatments. There were no serious side effects and a reduction in tumour activity was observed in the majority of patients. Survival time was in line with the expected course of this advanced disease.

General state of health is crucial

"The decisive factor for the success of the therapy is not the age of the patient, but their general state of health," explains Dr Marcel Schwinger, assistant doctor in urology.

This finding will help to ensure that older people with prostate cancer can be treated better and more individually in future, instead of being excluded from effective therapies simply because of their age.

The Würzburg team next wants to investigate the extent to which the combination of PSMA-RLT with other active substances can achieve synergistic effects and thus further improve the effectiveness of the therapy.

Prize for first author Dr Marcel Schwinger

In November 2025 in Düsseldorf, first author Dr Marcel Schwinger received the Hans Flohr Prize from the C.E. Alken Foundation, endowed with 2,000 euros, for this study. This foundation promotes urological research by inviting outstanding German-speaking researchers to give lectures every year and awarding a prize for excellent scientific work.

The award-winning publication

Marcel Schwinger, Charis Kalogirou, Vincent Scheper, Maximiliane Däuwel, Simon Weber, Anna Katharina Seitz, Hubert Kübler, Andreas K Buck, Rudolf A Werner, Philipp E Hartrampf. Radioligand treatment with [177Lu]Lu-PSMA I&T in elderly Patients - Safety, efficacy, and prognostic factors for survival. European Journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, 25 August 2025, doi: 10.1007/s00259-025-07519-1