Welcome to DrSlawin.com

As Director of the Baylor Prostate Center for the past 15 years, I have dedicated my life to the improvement of care for patients with prostate disease. I hope this website helps those of you searching for answers regarding prostate cancer and BPH, while providing a glimpse of some of our exciting and novel work in these areas. In addition to text, this website contains links to scientific papers and presentations, surgical videos, electronic nomograms and other useful tools for patients and physicians.

Prostate cancer remains the most common cancer diagnosed in men in this country and the second leading cause of cancer death. Despite these alarming statistics, there is considerable hope for men diagnosed with this disease. For example, the mortality rate due to prostate cancer has been steadily declining at the rate of 3.4% per year since 1990 (See Figure). While the reasons for this decline remain unproven, aggressive early detection using Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA)-based screening programs and aggressive therapy of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer are thought by many to underlie these great strides. I have dedicated my research, educational and clinical activities towards the goal of reducing mortality and side effects from prostate cancer and prostate cancer treatment. Our laboratory was a co-discoverer of the novel, disease-specific forms of PSA, BPSA (for benign PSA) and proPSA (associated with more aggressive forms of prostate cancer), and is actively involved in the discovery and clinical development of a host of other novel tumor markers. Information on these programs can be found here. Some of these markers are poised for FDA approval, in time to help solve some of the problems with PSA alone, which have caused some leading prostate cancer physicians to declare that the end of the PSA era is at hand.

Clinically, we are pioneers of novel and minimally invasive therapies for prostate cancer, like sural nerve and collagen-tube grafting to preserve potency during radical prostatectomy, cryosurgical therapy for prostate cancer which can be performed as an outpatient, and laparoscopic robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy using the da Vinci Surgical System, which is a “next generation” minimally invasive surgical therapy for prostate cancer that offers potentially significant advantages over standard laparoscopic prostatectomy. While already a leading center for potency sparing surgical techniques, we have recently improved our patient-focused clinical program to allow men undergoing radical prostatectomy to more rapidly and effectively regain potency, as well as initiated a clinical trials program, for those who qualify, focused on developing additional adjunctive therapies to further improve quality of life after prostate cancer treatment.

While highly effective for early prostate cancer, patients with more advanced disease require additional, novel approaches to therapy. Complementing the standard use of hormonal therapy, some advances in the use of chemotherapy have been reported, resulting in FDA approval for some types of advanced prostate cancer for the first time.  Building on these advances, we offer clinical trials to patients with high risk prostate cancer after prostatectomy and to patients with progressive hormone refractory prostate cancer.  Together with an outstanding group of collaborators, we have spent the last 5 years building a world-class cancer vaccine development program, with one Phase III clinical trial currently enrolling patients, and an exciting new Phase I/II trial of a technologically advanced, novel prostate cancer vaccine technology under clinical development by our own team of researchers, and  planned to begin by the 4th quarter of this year.  We hope the combination of greater efficacy and fewer treatment-related side effects will translate into better therapeutic options for these patients.

Finally, our interest in prostate cancer prevention, highlighted by the promising results of the PCPT trial earlier this year, demonstrating a 25% reduction in the risk of developing prostate cancer in patients taking finasteride, has led us to take a leading role in the design of the newly opened REDUCE trial, further studying the ability of a new drug, dutasteride, to prevent prostate cancer.

While not life-threatening, benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) is a disease that significantly affects quality of life and accounts for more visits to the doctor than prostate cancer. Again in this area, our research program has been very active in exploring novel drug and minimally invasive therapies for BPH. Our center was the leader for recruitment of patients to theMTOPS (Medical Therapy of Prostatic Symptoms) Trial, whose landmark results were recently published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. We have begun recruitment for the MIST trial, an important National Institutes of Health initiative studying the potential use of BOTOX injections to treat BPH.  Our laboratory was the discoverer of the novel molecular form of free PSA, originally named BPSA, but now called BPH-A (BPH Antigen”), one of the most exciting new markers for this disease  that provides novel predictive information on prostate size and the risk of BPH progression.   We are members of a consortium of six leading academic centers looking for new agents to treat BPH and new markers to help diagnose and monitor BPH.  And we are a leading center in caring for patients with BPH, offering a full range of medical and state-of-the-art minimally invasive therapies for this important disease, including the office based minimally invasive procedure, TUMT (transurethral microwave thermotherapy of the prostate) and Greenlight HPS laser prostatectomy for those patients who may need surgical intervention.

I hope you find the contents of this site informative and helpful. Please send your comments or questions to info@drslawin.com

For information about clinical trials that we have available, contact research@drslawin.com.

Sincerely,

Kevin M. Slawin, M.D.
Director, Vanguard Urologic Institute and the
   Texas Prostate Center
Clinical Professor of Urology, Baylor College of Medicine
Director of Urology, Memorial Hermann
   Hospital-Texas Medical Center

www.VanguardUrology.com