Oral chemotherapeutic agents in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer: A network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Multiple oral chemotherapeutic agents for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC) have been developed for conjugated use with conventional androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). Several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) report significant benefits in mHSPC patients. Therefore, we compared overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) benefits among considerable mHSPC oral chemotherapeutic agents. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We investigated mHSPC treatment efficacy through a systematic RCT-trial literature review (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, and Scopus). Two reviewers independently screened, extracted data, and assessed bias risk in duplicate. RESULTS: We identified 18 RCTs (n = 13,509). Concerning OS, ADT + abiraterone, ADT + abiraterone + docetaxel, ADT + apalutamide, ADT + bicalutamide, ADT + darolutamide + docetaxel, ADT + enzalutamide, ADT + orteronel, and ADT + rezvilutamide were more effective than the standard of care (SOC). Comparing PFS, most treatments were more effective than SOC, excluding ADT + bicalutamide, nilutamide, flutamide, ADT + bicalutamide + palbociclib, and ADT + nilutamide. ADT + docetaxel with androgen receptor targeted agent (ARTA) triplet therapy was not among the top three treatments determined through ranking analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Novel oral chemotherapeutic agent combination therapies must replace current ADT monotherapy and ADT + docetaxel SOC. Even so, ADT + docetaxel with ARTA triplet therapy still is not the best mHSPC treatment and requires further study.