Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, Talks About Importance of Mentorships in Genitourinary Oncology

CancerNetwork® spoke with Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, professor of medicine (medical oncology) and of urology and co-leader of Cancer Signaling Networks at Yale Cancer Center as well as co-chair of the at the 15th Annual Interdisciplinary Prostate Cancer Congress® and Other Genitourinary Malignancies, hosted by Physicians’ Education Resource®, LLC, about and how different to field of urothelial carcinoma treatment is and how his mentor Alan Yagoda, MD, would have felt about these positive changes.

Transcript:

Dr. Jean Hoffman-Censits presented a case [during the conference about] a patient who has been alive several years and has received [most] forms of therapy, including chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted treatments. We commented in the session that [had this been 5 years ago], the patient wouldn’t be alive today. This is one of the most exciting times for the treatment of urothelial carcinoma. I only wish that Alan Yagoda, MD, who was my mentor in this field, was still alive today. He was one of the inventors of the MVAC [methotrexate, vinblastine sulfate, doxorubicin hydrochloride, and cisplatin] regimen. At that point, that was one of the groundbreaking treatments for metastatic urothelial cancer. [There was a gap in progress] for a number of years, where we didn’t have anything that worked in the second line. Unfortunately, he can’t see today what’s going on and all the different progress that has been made, especially in the last 5 years.