Abstract

In advanced prostate cancer, rapid and successful drug development has resulted in multiple treatment options that require careful decision-making for individual patients. Clinicians face the increasingly difficult task of choosing from multiple potentially effective treatments that also are costly and potentially toxic. Further developments in novel next-generation imaging methods, biomarkers, molecular characterization, and genetic assays have led to many open questions and areas for which there is sparse or low-level evidence to support clinical decision-making. The Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference (APCCC) was initiated to provide a forum to discuss and debate current questions on the clinical management of men with advanced prostate cancer, with a special focus on these unclear situations. Two days of the conference are dedicated to high-level presentations, discussions, and debates to summarize and conceptualize the available literature and evidence. The conference concludes with voting by an interdisciplinary expert panel on pre-defined consensus questions targeting areas of clinical relevance. Following the conference, a manuscript with these expert recommendations is published in a peer-reviewed journal (Annals of Oncology in 2015; European Urology in 2017).