FDA approves Ferring's cancer castration drug

The USA's Ferring Pharmaceuticals has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for degarelix, an injectable  gonadotropin-releasing hormone receptor antagonist, indicated for  patients with advanced prostate cancer.

Degarelix is now the only GnRH receptor antagonist approved by the FDA  for the treatment of hormonally-sensitive advanced prostate cancer. The  drug achieves medical castration differently than luteinizing hormone  releasing hormone agonists, specifically by binding reversibly to GnRH  receptors on cells in the pituitary gland, quickly reducing the release  of gonadotropins and consequently testosterone.

Prostate cancer is known to grow in the presence of testosterone, the  suppression of which has been a treatment goal for advanced prostate  cancer for many years. Surgical castration was the standard method of  reducing testosterone from the 1940s until the mid-1980s when the  earliest forms of medical castration, LHRH agonists, were introduced.