World-renowned sexual health expert, Dr Chris Nelson, Chief of Psychology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, joins us in studio to run through the new Movember-supported "Guidelines for Sexual Health Care for Prostate Cancer Patients". A really helpful overview and structure for anyone working in this field, and for patients and their loved ones. Chris shares his 20-plus years of experience working in this field at one of the world's premier prostate cancer centres.

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Links:
Movember Sexual Health Guidelines

We recently hosted another live webinar for our Gold Partners, Mundipharma,  this time asking the question, "Is high-risk BCR actually metastatic prostate cancer??". It's a reasonable question! This podcast was anchored from the GU Cast studio in Melbourne by usual hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy, joined in person by Andrew Loblaw, radiation oncologist from Toronto, and online by medical oncologist Jeff Goh in Brisbane.

Best enjoyed on our YouTube channel if you want to check out the slides. 

Runsheet:

• Is high-risk biochemical recurrence already metastatic prostate cancer?Declan Murphy
• Is the management of high-risk BCR and mHSPC now the same? Jeffrey Goh
• Prostate radiotherapy is the real triplet therapy; plus when should we use SBRT? Andrew Loblaw

Q&A and case discussions

This webinar was organised by our Gold Partners, Mundipharma, who also support GU Cast as Gold Partners through an unrestricted educational grant.

They started off by introducing themselves as The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse - what could possibly go wrong!! Declan couldn't resist the opportunity to invite three very eminent radiation oncologists into the studio when they all happened to be in Melbourne, even if he was particularly outnumbered while Renu was away! Vedang Murthy (Tata Memorial, India), Andrew Loblaw (Sunnybrook Hospital, Canada), and Sarat Chander (Peter Mac, Melbourne) are all highly specialised in prostate radiation, so Declan invited them into the GU Cast studio to pick their brains on three big areas in prostate radiation:
1. Hypofractionation in 2025 - Who and How?
2. Who needs ADT and for how long when having prostate radiation?
3. Metastasis-directed therapy for oligometastatic disease - is there any point??

Tune in to find out how Urologist Declan Murphy fared up against these three Radiation Oncologists!!! Even better on our YouTube channel

This podcast is supported by our Bronze Partner, Icon Cancer Centre.

SABR supremos Piet Ost and Shankar Siva join us to discuss the management of lymph node-only recurrence following primary treatment of prostate cancer. And of course our resident PSMA PET/CT guru Michael Hofman also turned up as himself and Piet love debating the merits of PSMA!
How and when shoudl we image for biochemical recurrence? What are the limits of SABR? WHat about systemic therapy? It's all in this episode with great leaders in the field.
Recorded on site at Peter Mac on the fringe of the 2023 SABR Symposium. With your usual hosts Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Prof Fred Saad (University of Montreal) drops in to chat about the interesting condition that is non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC). Which men are at risk of developing metastases? When should we use an AR pathway inhibitor? Why PSMA PET/CT should NOT be used. And hear his thoughts on "dabbling" in prostate cancer!
Also joined by Professor Shankar Siva and Dr Louise Kostos from Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Hosted as ever by Dr Renu Eapen and Professor Declan Murphy.
Fred was on a speaker tour in Australia supported by Bayer Pharmaceuticals and this Themed Podcast is supported by Bayer, Silver Partners of GU Cast.
Update  -  we mentioned that darolutamide was the only ARPI listed for reimbursement in Australia (true at time of recording). We can update that all TGA approved ARPIs for nmCRPC are now reimbursed in Australia.

Even better on our YouTube channel

What a great ESMO for GU Oncology!! Declan caught up with some plenary speakers in Madrid to discuss the biggest topics. PSMA theranostics with Louise Emmett (ENZA-P) and Oliver Sartor (PSMAfore); ARPIs in biochemical recurrence with Steve Freedland (EMBARK), Morgan Roupret and Boris Hadaschik. Plus the latest negative immunotherapy trials in prostate cancer with Christian Gratzke.

Even better on our YouTube channel 

The LuTectomy trial has just been published in European Urology, and as the GU Cast team have been very much involved, we thought we should dive into the details on today's podcast. LuTectomy is a clinical trial to evaluate the role of 177-Lutetium-PSMA prior to radical prostatectomy. Declan is the study co-PI along with Professor Michael Hofman, and Renu is first author on the LuTectomy paper (and doing a PhD on it)! Plus, Professor Ken Herrmann from Essen has co-authored the accompanying Editorial in European urology and joins us for a discussion.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Thanks to all the LuTectomy team and to all of our fantastic patients. And huge thanks to our funders.

Funding/Support:
This investigator-initiated study was funded by the Movember Foundation, the Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) with contribution from the EJ Whitten Foundation and Novartis.

Acknowledgements:
We thank the medical, surgical, nursing, nuclear medicine, and administrative staff of all the departments at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre who were involved in this trial. We thank the patients who agreed to participate in the study. PSMA-617 was supplied
 by Novartis and no carrier added 177Lu by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
We remember and thank the late Dr John Violet for his involvement including study conception and design.

Links:
LuTectomy paper in European Urology
LuTectomy Editorial 

One of our most popular episodes in 2022 was "Patting the Hormone Therapy Shark" with author, surfer and prostate cancer survivor, Tim Baker. And a lot has happened in the 12 months since so we invited Tim back for a follow-up chat in this Themed Podcast supported by our GU Cast Gold Partners, Mundipharma.
Tim's inspiring approach to managing the side-effects of androgen deprivation therapy are well worth knowing for anyone involved in advanced prostate cancer including clinicians (especially clinicians!), nurses and allied health care professionals, industry, and of course patients and their loved ones. Tim runs through his "MEDS" strategy in this podcast, and also chats about other options including creative writing, the topic of his ongoing PhD.
Thanks to our friends at Mundipharma for their ongoing support for GU Cast through their Gold Partnership.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Links:
Tim's website
Previous GU Cast episode 

We hijacked our good friends Professor Boris Hadaschik (Urologist, Essen, Germany), and Associate Professor Tyler Seibert (Radiation Oncologist, University of California, San Diego), who happened to be in Melbourne this week, and diverted them into the GU Cast studio for a chat about high-risk prostate cancer. Boris and Tyler were on a speaker tour supported Janssen Pharmaceuticals, so we put together this Themed Podcast supported by Janssen (Gold Partners of GU Cast), to probe three key questions in high-risk prostate cancer in 2023:
1. What is the role of PSMA PET/CT in initial staging?
2. If the PSMA PET/CT is N0, can we avoid pelvic lymph node dissection?
3. What is the optimal radiotherpay strategy for high-risk prostate cancer in 2023?
Superb multidisciplinary chat with two great experts. Thanks to Janssen for their support for this Themed Episode of GU Cast.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Twitter links:
Boris Hadaschik
Tyler Seibert 

The European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) Annual Meeting is the World's leading nuclear medicine extravaganza! Today we cross live to Professor Michael Hofman and friends to hear some of the GU highlights at this year's annual meeting in Vienna.  Michael is joined by Prof Ken Herrmann, Dr Kerry Jewell, Dr Francesco Ceci, Dr Phiilip Kuo, Dr Bastiaan Privé and Dr Wolfgang Fendler. A fantastic update from EANM in Vienna!

Even better on our YouTube channel

The mass media were quick to pick up on two papers in JAMA Surgery last week with headlines such as "Patients have better outcomes with female surgeons", and "Should you pick the sex of your surgeon?". So what's it all about??
We chat with lead author of one of these papers. Dr Chris Wallis, Urologist at the University of Toronto, whose looked at outcomes for more than 1.2 million (!!) patients undergoing a range of surgery types, and showed that patients operated on by female surgeons had less complications and better survival. Another study from Sweden showed similar benefits in patients undergoing gallbladder surgery.
Chris tells us more. Plus Aoife McVey brings us some great social media highlights this week. 

Even better on our YouTube channel

Article Links:
Chris Wallis et al paper
Swedish study on gallbladder surgery
Guardian Newspaper article

Twitter Links:
Fun at the EUREP Meeting courtesy of Uros Milenkovoic
Kim Kardashian in an MRI scanner
Rhea Liang weighs in on ortho comments
David Canes explains bladder diverticulum 3

David Canes Youtube channel 

Is this the solution to screening for prostate cancer?? Don't bother with a PSA test and instead screen using a 10 minute MRI scan??! Re-IMAGINE is a very interesting prospective study published in BMJ Oncology this week which did exactly that with some really interesting findings.
We are joined by study authors Professor Caroline Moore and Professor Shonit Punwani to discuss.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Links:
BMJ Oncology paper
Coverage in Urology Times 

What is a rectal spacer and do they help reduce side-effects from prostate radiation??! That's today's topic on GU Cast. Renu caught up with rectal spacer enthusiasts Professor Peter Orio (Dana Farber Cancer Institute) and Associate Professor Shankar Siva (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) in downtown Melbourne this week to learn all about this topic.
Thanks to our friends at Icon Cancer Centre who supported Peter's educational tour to Australia this week.
Also watch full video on YouTube
Links:
Randomised trial of Barrigel rectal spacer in JAMA Oncology 2023 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2801296

We never need an excuse to visit Sydney, and for sure when one of our favourite meetings of the year is in the Harbourside City then count us in! The Annual Meeting of ANZUP is something we try and get to every year and have really enjoyed bringing you highlights. This year we catch up with some international faculty including Roger Li (Moffitt Cancer Centre, USA), ANZUP Prostate Cancer Committee bosses Lisa Horvath (Chris O'Brien Lifehouse) and Jarad Martin (Genesis Care), Dickon Hayne (Fiona Stanley Hospital) regarding his NMICB RCT, and Bernie Reilly (Prostate CAncer Foundation of Australia) about some fantastic resources for prostate cancer patients. 

Big congrats to all at ANZUP for another excellent meeting and for all they do for GU oncology in Australia and New Zealand. 

PS - apologies for some sub-standard audio on this one. 

GU Cast Conference Highlights are supported by our Conference Highlights Partner, Bayer.

Here's a quick plug for another podcast that GU Cast is very happy to support!
Launching in September 2023, the European Urology Podcast is a new monthly podcast to accompany the world's highest ranked urology journal, European Urology. Co-hosted by Professor Declan Murphy in Melbourne and Dr Joyce Baard in Amsterdam, the European Urology Podcast will highlight key papers and feature interviews with authors, editors and special guests. It will be produced by the team behind GU Cast.
Learn more in this short trailer and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform to get the latest content. Just search European Urology Podcast.
Also available as a full video podcast on the European Urology YouTube channel 

Major scientific journals only change their Editor-in-Chief every 8-10 years so it's quite a big deal when it happens! Today we chat with Professor Alberto Briganti, incoming Editor-in-Chief of European Urology,  the world's highest ranked urology journal, and with Professor Morgan Roupret, incoming Editor-in-Chief of European Urology Oncology.
Why has everybody's impact factor dropped this year? What are their grand plans for their respective journals? How can we get our research noticed? Hear all the answers with Declan and Renu in this episode of GU Cast.
Plus Aoife McVey returns to tell us what caught her eye on social media this week.

Even better as a video podcast on our YouTube channel 

Declan and Renu as you haven't seen them before! They leave their cosy  podcast studio to do battle at the Australia & New Zealand Urogenital & Prostate Trials Group (ANZUP) Annual Scientific Meeting! The battleground is renal cancer, with Renu arguing in favour of adjuvant immunotherapy, and Declan arguing against. No holds barred. Who wins??! Tune in to find out.
Plus we chat with some of the ANZUP ASM international faculty including Alex Wyatt, Lauren Buffart, Ananya Choudhury, Andrea Apolo and Darren Feldman.
Congratulations to ASM Convenors Ben Tran and Renu Eapen, their Scientific Meeting and all at ANZUP  for putting on a terrific meeting. Thanks to ANZUP for allowing us to use footage from the debate, and to debate sponsors MSD who are also GU Cast Silver Partners. 

This episode best enjoyed on YouTube

This, our 100th episode, is a very special GU Cast, in which we remember the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which hit just as the Urological Society of Australia & New Zealand (USANZ) Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) was kicking off in the city. 185 people lost their lives with many thousands injured, and with huge devastation across the region. Declan returned to Christchurch recently to put together this special episode, which includes some of his original footage from the time of the earthquake.
The highlight of this episode is a full replay of this year's Harry Harris Oration, delivered in February 2023 at the USANZ ASM in Melbourne. Dr Samuel "Harry" Harris, was one of the founding fathers of USANZ, and this annual oration in his name at the opening ceremony of our ASM is the most prestigious in the USANZ calendar. We invited the four inaugural recipients of the Christchurch Medal,
Urologists Dr Stephen Mark (Christchurch), Dr Lydia Johns-Putra (Ballarat), Dr Stuart Phillip (Brisbane), and Dr Julian Shah (London), to deliver the Harry Harris Oration by remembering Christchurch.  These four individuals were recognised for acts of extraordinary bravery in the rubble of Christchurch, risking their own lives to help victims in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. In this Harry Harris Oration, the Christchurch Medallists transport us back to the events of that fateful day, and reflect on what it means today. For those of us who were there, this was a very emotional and sombre occasion; for those who were not, this will be a chance to understand why the Christchurch Earthquake is such an important event in the history of our community.
We are very proud of this special GU Cast. We do hope that it means something to our audience around the world.

This episode best appreciated on YouTube

This is for hardcore PSMA aficionados!! This is the 7th of our ProsTIC/Prostate Cancer Foundation Global Webinars focussing on all things PSMA theranostics (you can find the rest in our back catalogue stretching back to April 2020). We peek into theranostics beyond what we currently have with beta-emitters like LuPSMA, into the tantalising world of alpha-PSMA theranostics.
Multidisciplinary researchers from the PCF-funded TACTICAL project give a sneak into current and future work. Hear from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center experts Prof Mike Morris, Dr Lisa Bodei and Dr Jason Lewis about very exciting developments in DLL3 imaging and theranostics in neuroendocrine prostate cancer;  Dr Marwa Rahimi (Radiochemist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) and David Pattison (Nuclear Medicine Physician, Royal Brisbane Hospital), overview Lead-212 targeted alpha therapy; and Dr Megan Crumbaker (Medical Oncologist (St Vincent's Hoapital, Sydney) who discusses Actinium-225 clinical data. Plus Dr James Buteau (Nuclear Medicine Physician, Peter Mac) on the Q&A
Co-hosted by Declan Murphy and Michael Hofman from the GU Cast studio in Melbourne. along with Dr Howard Soule and Dr Andrea Miyahira from the PCF in California. Even better as a video podcast 

Dr Sima Porten from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), was in Melbourne this week for the ANZUP Annual Scientific Meeting (more from that in an upcoming episode), so she popped into the GU Cast studio to chat with Renu and Declan. Renu of course spent a year with Sima and colleagues doing Fellowship training in GU Oncology so she was very happy to have her good friend and mentor in town.
Sima is a very highly regarded expert in bladder cancer and delivered some great talks on this topic to the ANZUP ASM this week. We chat with her about strategies to help patients avoid cystectomy (bladder removal) despite refractory high-grade bladder cancer. We also chat about avoiding cystectomy in muscle-invasive bladder cancer, and her thoughts on open vs robotic surgery from her perspective as a very high-volume bladder cancer surgeon.

Even better when watched on YouTube 

Two cracking bladder cancer studies to discuss on GU Cast today (in our brand new GU Cast studio)! We are joined by Dr Sia Daneshmand, Urologist and Director of Urologic Oncology at the University of Southern California, who presented the headline-making Tar-200/SunRIse-1 study at the recent Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association. Not sure what a urological pretzel is and how it can help patients with high-grade non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer? Sia explains all! 

He was also an investigator on the SWOG 1011 trial presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting recently by Dr Seth Lerner. A practice-changing randomised trial of standard vs extended pelvic lymph node dissection for patents with invasive bladder cancer. 

These are very significant papers and we really enjoyed having Sia on GU Cast to discuss. 

Even better on YouTube when you can check out our new studio!

Stereotactic Ablative Body Radiotherapy (SABR) has been a great tool for managing low volume metastatic prostate cancer for a few years now. One or two visits to the radiation centre, highly targeted, minimal side-effects. So could it be used to treat the primary prostate cancer itself with similar success?
Today we have top SABR experts Dr Alison Tree (Royal Marsden Hospital, London), and Associate Professor Shankar SIva (Peter Mac, Melbourne) in the GU Cast studio, and Dr Gerard Morton on Zoom from Sunnybrook Cancer Centre in Toronto. Alison talks through the most recent update from the PACE-B study and we ask which technology is best for prostate cancer.

Full video podcast available on our YouTube channel 

With approvals and reimbursement increasing all the time for the use of AR pathway inhibitors (ARPIs) in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC), we chat today about how front-line clinicians need to make sure we are making the most of these opportunities for our patients. Urologists in particular are the clinicians who most frequently diagnose men with metastatic prostate cancer, and who therefore need to be aware of the changing opportunities to improve outcomes for our patients.
Today in this Themed Episode supported by our Gold Partner, Janssen, we chat with Professor Fred Saad, Chair and Professor of Urology at the University of Montreal, who says it is "unethical to treat newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer with ADT alone"! We are also joined by Dr Ciara Conduit, Medical Oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, who helps us understand management options for these patients.

Also available as a video podcast on our YouTube channel 

So if you haven't seen all the fuss about ChatGPT on social media in the past two weeks, then imagine this. You have to write a 500 word introduction to an article on adjuvant therapy following renal cancer surgery, you are a week past deadline and  you have writer's block. Or it's your thankless task to organise next year's on-call roster for your Department. Or your year 11 son has asked you to explain Max Planck’s Determination of the Avogadro Constant.
Well fear not, ChatGPT is here to save the day!! Just type in the request, and this quite remarkable AI tool will spew out the answer, with quite incredible literacy (including citations), and even empathy and humour. Just sensational. It will even write code to help you build that app you always wanted but had no idea how to program. Need a patient-friendly explanation of a new trial? Or maybe a big grant application. Just type in your request, and hey presto, ChatGPT does the rest. In seconds. For free!
Today we have invited some great guests to discuss this topic. Dr Anobel Odisho (UCSF) has been all over this for years, and has posted some fantastic tweets about this. Communications guru Todd Morgan (University of Michigan) and urology trainee Jonathan O'Brien (who is doing research on AI in penile cancer) pitch in with their thoughts. And we are also joined by Liam Mannix, National Science Reporter with leading Australian broadsheets The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Even better on our Youtube channel

Links:
ChatGPT through Open AI
Liam Mannix's article in The Age
David Canes excellent sub-stack overview

Twitter links
Anobel Odisho
Todd Morgan
Liam Mannix
Jonathan O'Brien
David Canes

Episode 2 of our monthly GU Cast Journal Club and today we focus on two key papers from recent times - the TRANSLATE trial of transperineal vs transrectal biopsy, and Keynote-564 on the role of adjuvant pembrolizomab following nephrectomy.   
After great feedback from last month's launch episode, we are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal Club Editors, Dr Carlos Delgado (Melbourne, AUS), and Dr Elena Berg (Munich, GER), along with main GU Cast Hosts, Renu Eapen and  Declan Murphy

Links to papers and previous podcasts below:
1. Local anaesthetic transperineal biopsy versus transrectal prostate biopsy in prostate cancer detection (TRANSLATE): a multicentre, randomised, controlled trial Lancet Oncology 2025
GU Cast on TRANSLATE

2. Overall Survival with Adjuvant Pembrolizumab in Renal-Cell Carcinoma NEJM 2024
GU Cast on K-564 OS paper

GU Cast Journal Club is supported by our Partner, MSD, through an unrestricted educational grant.

Even better on our YouTube channel

About GU Cast Journal Club:
Each month, two papers are discussed, each of which are of importance to the GU Oncology community. These may be recent papers, or occasionally we will chose a classic landmark paper in GU Oncology
. The objective is to draw attention to important papers in GU Oncology, and critique these in a robust manner
. The key target audience is trainees working in Urology, Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Nuclear Medicine, and diagnostic specialties such as Radiology and Pathology. But any of our regular audience are likely to enjoy this Journal Club series.

The annual Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Retreat is in its 29th year, and is the showpiece event of the PCF's incredible research program. Each year, PCF investigators from around the world gather in California to share their work and interact together. Fair to say it has developed a legendary status among the prostate cancer community across the globe.
GU Cast's Dr Renu Eapen has recently received a PCF Young Investigator Award to support her PhD into immunological aspects of prostate cancer in patients receiving Lu-PSMA on the LuTectomy trial, so she was excited to travel to Carlsbad (CA) to attend this year's PCF Retreat. She joined up with fellow Young Investigator Dr Edmond Kwan to bring us a few highlights from this year's meeting. Lots of familiar faces in there! Watch out for Felix Feng, Misha Beltran, Howard Soule, Andrea Miyahira, Todd Morgan, Chuck Ryan, Tyler Seibert, Alicia Morgans, Neeraj Agarwal, Gina Carithers and many more.

Even better on our Youtube channel

Links:
The PCF
Urotoday 

Is grade group 1 (Gleason 6 in old money) really prostate cancer? Wouldn't life be a little easier for patients (and the rest of the world) if we could somehow remove the label "cancer" from this relatively indolent condition??
Well this decade-old discussion seems to have developed a lot of momentum in the past year, driven by urologists like Dr Scott Eggener (University of Chicago) and Dr Matt Cooperberg (University of California San Francisco), who with others have written some nice articles to argue the case for "re-branding" grade group 1 as a non-cancer. This would certainly deal with the lingering issue of over-treatment of low-risk prostate cancer which persists to a variable extent around the world.
Alas, it's not so simple. Expert GU pathologists like Dr Eva Comperat (University of Vienna) point out that this is cancer. Period. If the clinical community have an issue with over-treatment, then we should deal with this another ways, rather than ask for the impossible.
Today we thrash this out with Scott, Matt and Eva. A great listen/watch. And maybe a way forward...

Even better on our YouTube channel

A GU Cast Ireland Special! Declan recently travelled to the Annual Meeting of the Irish Society of Urology and posted this GU cast special from Killashee House in County Kildare. Apologies in advance for him wallowing in his Irishness! 

Declan catches up with Urologists David Bouchier-Hayes, Eva Bolton, Catherine Dowling, and Richie Power, to chat about everything from Terence Millen and Peter Freyer to how the Irish are inspiring young women to do urology. Plus we hear about the late Dan Kelly, a legendary Irish urologist who passed away recently. 

Our Youtube version features some great scenes from beautiful Killashee House

Congratulations to ISU President Kiaran O’Malley and his organising committee. 

Enjoy! 

Links:

Irish Society of Urology

OK this episode of GU Cast is essential listening for anyone who has anything to do with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), or "hormone therapy", for men with advanced prostate cancer. Whether you are a prescriber (especially if you are a prescriber), nurse or allied health professional, patient, loved one, industry representative, or researcher - this is one not to miss.
Tim Baker is an award-winning author, journalist and storyteller specialising in surfing history and culture. At the age of 50, he was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer (PSA 120 and bone metastases), and has been on intermittent ADT for the past seven years. Thankfully his cancer is well controlled, but the story of his experience is a sobering insight into the devastating impact of ADT, especially in a younger man. But his self-directed strategy of MEDS (Meditation; Exercise; Diet; Sleep), is an inspiring insight into under-utilised mechanisms to make life on ADT more tolerable.
Although he is a believer in medical science and is grateful for the expertise of the specialists who have looked after him., Tim's description of his initial diagnosis and management is uncomfortable listening for those of us who prescribe a lot of ADT.
We all need to do more to support our patients in these situations, and Tim's story certainly gives plenty of food for thought. Meditation? Surf classes? Psychedelic-assisted therapy? It's all in here!
Declan and Renu loved this book. It's a great gift for anyone involved in the hormone therapy arena - why don't you pick up a copy or give it as a present for Christmas?! Available in all the usual places.

GU Cast is even better on Youtube

Links:
Tim Baker's website
Tim Baker twitter
Meditation video
Yoga Nidra video
Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia

"Prostate Specific" Membrane Antigen PET/CT - now also available to stage kidney cancer! We seriously need a name change here. Already we know that PSMA PET/CT shows a lot more than the prostate/prostate cancer, but could it have utility in staging renal cancer?? We've certainly had a lot of off-trial experience of this at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre since 2014, and we know see data  in Eur Urol Open Science to describe this experience.
We are joined by senior author Associate Professor Shankar Siva, radiation oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Dr Rana McKay, GU medical oncologist at the University of California, San Diego, who has an interest in FOLH1 expression in renal cancer, and Peter Mac nuclear medicine physician Professor Michael Hofman, to discuss PSMA and renal cancer.

Check out this episode on Youtube

Links:
Prof Siva's paper in Eur Urol Open Science

A great episode focussing on two aspects of bladder cancer. Bladder preservation for muscle-invasive cancer is in the limelight again following the recent update of the landmark BC2001 trial. We chat with bladder cancer gurus Dr Neha Vapiwala, Radiation Oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Ashish Kamat, Urologist at MD Anderson Cancer Centre, and Dr Nathan Lawrentschuk, Urologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Everything you need to know!
Plus a chat about the fascinating Bladder Path study presented by Dr Nick James at ESMO22, challenging the role of TURBT in managing bladder cancer. Spicy!
And of course, Dr Aoife McVey pops up with her Twitti-Leaks section (yes she has given it a name)!

Even more enjoyable on YouTube 

It's pretty shocking how many prostate cancers went missing during COVID, especially in Melbourne which experienced the most prolonged lockdown in the world. The data is still being cleaned but it is estimated that up to 3000 men who would have been expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer over the past 2.5 years, have not yet been diagnosed.
It is prostate cancer awareness month in Australia, so a good time to chat with some experts to better understand the issue of the missing cancers. Plus we hear of some worrying examples.
Declan and Renu are joined by Alan White, well known patient advocate, Anne Savage, Chief Executive Director of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, and Professor Grant McArthur, Chair of the Victorian COVID Cancer Network, whose group have been looking at this data in real-time since the start of COVID. Grant is also a prostate cancer survivor himself.

Also posted on  Youtube

Links:
PCFA
The Prostate Zone
Peter Mac story on missing diagnoses
VCCC Alliance 

It wasn't that long ago that we would have scoffed at the idea of using radiation therapy to treat primary kidney cancer. Not any more!! We are joined by two top experts in kidney cancer, and leaders of ongoing research in this field, to discuss the expanding role for radiation therapy in managing primary renal cancer.
Dr Rana McKay, GU Medical Oncologist at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Professor Shankar Siva, Radiation Oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, take us through the relatively recent history of radiation for renal cancer and highlight some ongoing trials in this area. A fantastic overview for anyone interested in renal cancer.
Plus our intrepid social media watcher, Dr Aoife McVey, pops in to tell us what has caught her eye on Twitter this week.

You can watch us broadcasting from our studio here on Youtube.

Links:
Twitter - Dr Rana McKay
Twitter - A/Prof Shankar Siva
Twitter - Dr Aoife McVey
Twitter - CheatUrology
Twitter - GoumasUrologia

https://urologycheatsheets.org/ 

International speaker tours are back! And this week we had two fantastic GU oncology experts visiting Australia to do a lecture tour on hot topics in metastatic prostate cancer.  So of course we invited them to attend our multidisciplinary team meeting at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, then pop upstairs to teh Gu Cast studio.
Dr Tian Zhang from UT Southwestern in Dallas, and Dr Rahul Aggarwal from UCSF, are both prolific medical oncologists with a huge amount of expertise in prostate cancer. We asked them to highlight three key areas in each of metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, and metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, to avoid us having to wade through teh endless stream of data in these fast-moving areas.
What areas did they chose to highlight?? Well have a listen!

Also posted on YouTube

It's been two and half years since we posted our first GU Cast and it's been fun! We are so grateful to all our listeners and viewers for supporting us, sending us great comments, and getting involved in the conversation. GU Oncology is such a fast-moving world, and we have really enjoyed posting content to keep ourselves and our audiences up to date.
We also have some exciting plans to develop the podcast and we thought we should share these with you. Tune in to this short episode to hear more! 

Better enjoyed on YouTube

Declan and Renu

Links:
New GU Cast website 

We poke around under the hood of a brand new Cyberknife facility here in Melbourne, the first on the East coast of Australia, and find out what it's all about. What is it for, who might benefit, and being surgeons we have to ask, why do they call it a "knife"?! Is it just to make it sound a bit like surgery - stay tuned to find out! 
We chat with our good mate Shankar Siva, stereotactic radiation guru, Nigel Middlebrook, Physicist, shows us the back end, Gemma Waters, Radiation Therapist talks us through planning, and Icon Cancer Group Chief Executive Mark Middleton tells us how he decides which expensive projects his team invests in, and how they partnered with Cyberknife experts 5D Clinics for this project.

Even better on our YouTube channel. 

 
This Themed Episode is supported by our Bronze Partner, Icon Cancer Group.

Links:
5D Clinics Melbourne
Icon Cancer Group 

GU Cast is pleased to cross-post another of these excellent ProsTIC PSMA theranostics webinars in collaboration with the Priotate Cancer Foundation's Global Knowledge Exchange programs. This webinar focuses on the new era of PSMA theranostics post-FDA approval.
This webinar is co-hosted by Professor Michael Hofman, Nuclear Medicine Physician and Director of ProsTIC at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, and GU Cast's own Professor Declan Murphy, with comments from the PCFs Dr Howard Soule and Dr Andrea Miyahira.  Special guest presenters include Professor Silke Gillessen, Professor Ken Herrmann, and Dr Louise Kostos and Dr James Buteau.

For all the slides and visual bits, enjoy on Youtube here 

Part 2 of our #EAU22 highlights from Amsterdam features chats with EAU Guidelines Chair Professor Maria Ribal, the inimitable Associate Professor David Bouchier-Hayes, and a roving report from Dr Sophie Rintoul-Hoad as she sails around Amsterdam's canals. Plus some live reporting from the GU Cast reception at the Hoopman Pub in Amsterdam with Dr Alastair Lamb, Dr Marcus Cumberbatch, Dr Ben Challacombe, and a trio of colorectal surgeons who just love urology. Check out everyone wearing their GU Cast merch!
And we also cross-post Dr Matt Cooperberg's UroToday interview with Declan and Renu on the LuTectomy study. Jam packed.

Best appreciated on Youtube here 

Declan and Renu bring you the first of their two part #EAU22 conference highlights from Amsterdam. How great to have the EAU back in person! We catch up with lots of old friends and bring you top scientific highlights. Guests on this episode include Jim Catto, Peter Black, Tim O'Brien, Eva Comperat, plus some fun on EAU TV with Chris Sweeney and Alberto Briganti.

Also on YouTube here 

Our website GU Cast

USANZ ASM is back! Yey! The Urological Society of Australia & New Zealand ASM was one of the first victims of the pandemic in 2020, and has finally returned, albeit delayed from its usual Feb/March slot. We caught up with a bunch of local and international delegates on the Gold Coast to talk about their scientific and social highlights. Enjoy!

Also cross posted on Youtube, well worth a watch!

Our website 

Wow did this paper cause a fuss this week!! The ENACT trial was published online in JAMA Oncology last weekend and provoked a huge outcry on social media. Many people were  genuinely shocked at the study design, the conclusions, even the title of the study.
We've linked to the paper below, but in summary, this prospective multi centre study enrolled patients with with low-risk or favourable intermediate-risk prostate cancer, entirely suitable for active surveillance (ie no treatment/no side-effects), and randomised half of them to receive enzalutamide. Yes enzulautmide,  a super powerful AR pathway inhibitor that works very well in men with advanced prostate cancer. But with plenty of side-effects.
So we decided to invite study co-author, active surveillance advocate and friend of teh podcast, Dr Matt Cooperberg, to come on and help us understand the rationale. We also welcomed Dr Keith Kowalczyk, Georgetown Medical Centre, Washington DC, to help us figure it out.
What do you think? Comments welcome on our Youtube channel

Links:
ENACT paper 

GU Cast returns to one of our favourite topics - PSMA imaging and theranostics! We chat with Nuclear Medicine Physician Professor Michael Hofman, and GU Medical Oncologist, Associate Professor Arun Azad, about some PSMA highlights at the recent ASCO Annual Meeting. Michael presented the eagerly anticipated overall survival data from the TheraP trial in the oral abstract session, and discusses the findings with Arun, Renu and Declan.
They also discuss another important paper in the oral abstract session - an analysis of the quantitative parameters of PSMA PET/CT scans in the VISION study.

Also available of our Youtube channel here

Part 2 of Declan's visit to the Martini-Klinik in Hamburg. Today he chats with Professor Derya Tilki, Urologist and Clinician Researcher, about their ongoing  research activities, including the huge database of radical prostatectomy outcomes which now includes a staggering 35,000 patients.
Plus a fantastic trip to the operating room with Professor Tobias Maurer to perform PSMA-guided salvage pelvic lymph node dissection. Declan gets to scrub in and learn from Tobias about his huge experience in this evolving area.

Also cross-posted to our YouTube channel, featuring Declan's up close experience assisting Tobias perform PSMA radio guided surgery

Declan Murphy continues his sabbatical adventures in Europe by spending a few days at the famous Martini-Klinik in Hamburg. The Martini-Klinik is the world's largest radical prostatectomy centre, and is preparing to move to a new building to increase their capacity even more.
In this first part of a two-part podcast/videocast, Declan chats with Chief of Urology Professor Markus Graefen, and spends some time in the operating rooms with Markus and Professor Alexander Haese, looking at the Neurosafe frozen section technique which was developed at the Martini Klinik. Plus we discuss a new randomised trial of pelvic lymph node dissection. Part 2 follows next week.

GU Cast also cross posts on YouTube. This is a great one to watch on YouTube due to our trips to the operating rooms at Martini-Klinik

Links:
YouTube version of this episode
Martini-Klinik website 

In his third and final podcast from Lugano, Declan chats with Dr Axel Merseberger (Lubeck), Dr Jochen Walk (Marseille), Ms Jane Fisher (Melbourne), and Dr Chris Sweeney (Boston/Adelaide). Plus listen out for fantastic father and son act, Professor Joe and Oisin O'Sullivan, who played for the crowds outside the Villa Cian. 

Silke Gillessen and Aurelius Omlin were also pleased to announce the dates of the next APCCC which will take place from 25-27 April 2022 in spectacular Lugano. 

GU Cast is our regular podcast brought to you by Professor Declan Murphy and Dr Renu Eapen, Urologists at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. Available on all major podcasting platforms. Now also cross-posting on YouTube. https://gucast.buzzsprout.com/

Also cross-posted on Youtube

Links:
APCCC Website
SAGENCI 

Declan continues his three part podcast from the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference (APCCC) 2022. Imaging played a very dominant (and disruptive) role at APCCC 2022, especially PSMA PET/CT with lots of “train has left the station analogies” and a healthy amount of panellists wanting to stay on the platform! 

Today Declan speaks with four imaging experts to hear their thoughts. Nuclear Medicine physicians Professor Michael Hofman (Melbourne), Professor Stefano Fanti (Bologna) and Dr Ken Herrmann (Essen), were joined by MRI guru Professor Anwar Padhani (London). Fair to say the prostate cancer world needs help figuring out what to do with PSMA PET/CT!! 

Dr Marcus Cumberbatch, Consultant Urologist at the University of Sheffield Hospital (Sheffield), and Melbourne alumnus, gives a great perspective of his experience as a delegate at APCCC.

Finally (for this episode), Declan speaks with top prostate cancer specialists Dr Neha Vapiwala, Radiation Oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadephia), and Dr Elena Castro, Medical Oncologist at the Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital (Malaga). 

Also cross-posted including some great video on our YouTube channel.

Links:
APCCC Website 

Big news today with the publication in JAMA of the eagerly anticipated PRIME study, a prospective multicentre trial comparing biparametric (bp) with multiparametric (mp) MRI in men suspected of having prostate cancer. Of course, mpMRI includes contrast enhanced sequences following injection of gadolinium, adding time, cost, plus the burden of gadolinium to bpMRI, and there have been suggestions that bpMRI may be just as effective as mpMRI for detecting clinically significant prostate cancer.
We are joined today by trial PI Veeru Kasivisvanathan (Urologist, UCL, London), and Francesco Giganti (Radiologist, UCL, London), to discuss the findings and what this means going forward. And it is all good news!

Your host Declan Murphy is on his own today while Renu Eapen on the road in Singapore.

Even better on our YouTube channel

Links below:
JAMA paper published today
Twitter:  @compassurology @veerukasi @giga_fra
Website: compassurology.org

Funders:
John Black Charitable Foundation, Prostate Cancer UK, European Association of Urology Research Foundation, Wolfgang.Dieckmann Foundation.

Declan Murphy stops off at the world-famous Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) in Amsterdam for a couple of days to visit his old friend, Professor Henk van der Poel. Henk is Consultant Urologist and Chief of Urology at the NKI, and leads a fantastic team with world-renowned expertise in GU oncology. 

Declan spends a day in the operating room to watch Henk perform robotic radical prostatectomy and extended pelvic lymph node dissection using a fluorescence-guided approach to detect sentinel lymph nodes, and hears the latest about Henk’s ongoing trials in this area. 

He then spends a day engaging with some of Henk’s collaborators and PhD students, and has a sit-down chat with Henk and Dr Hilda de Barros who recently published a very nice manuscript in European Urology on PSMA radio-guided surgery.

 GU Cast also cross-posts on Youtube - check out Declan's visit to NKI here. 

Links:

Netherlands Cancer Institute
de Borras et al European Urology paper
Youtube version  

To celebrate the return of the world’s premiere prostate cancer meeting, GU Cast is very pleased to bring you the first of three special editions from the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference 2022. GU Cast co-host Professor Declan Murphy joined other panellists and delegates in beautiful Lugano, and recorded interviews with many other speakers and attendees, and captured some fantastic footage by Lake Lugano (check out our YouTube version). In this episode, Declan chats with APCCC Convenors, Dr Silke Gillessen and Dr Aurelius Omlin, and panellists Dr Pierre Blanchard, Dr Jochen Walz, and Dr Bertrand Tombal, along with patient representative David Mathesen. Plus Dr Derya Tilki rather cheekily turns the microphone on Declan! Of course APCCC is now a hybrid meeting, so you can still register and enjoy the full presentations and discussion (link below). 

You can also watch this podcast on YouTube and enjoy some great scenery in Lugano.

Links:
APCCC Website 

Another GU Cast special from the ProsTIC Preceptorship in Melbourne. Today Dr Renu Eapen welcomes back guest co-host Associate Professor Arun Azad, Medical Oncologist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, to discuss some fantastic translational work going on in his Centre based on our Lutetium PSMA experience.
We welcome three great guests to talk about their work. Dr Luc Furic is Head of Translational Prostate Cancer Research at Mac; Dr Louise Kostos is a Medical Oncologist doing a PhD looking at mechanisms of resistance with LuPSMA, and Dr Heidi Fettke is a Post-Docotoral researcher focussing on circulating tumour cells in LuPSMA patients. Plus of course co-host Dr Eapen is also doing a PhD focussing on the immunology of patients receiving LuPSA on the LuTectomy trial.

Amazing discussion about the very exciting translational opportunities which LuPSMA presents.

Also posted on YouTube if you want to see us in studio

Links
ProsTIC Preceptorship 
ProsTIC Twitter
Dr Louise Kostos Twitter