Prostate carcinoma is the most common cancer in men. It is estimated that around 68,000 men in Germany were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012. Although the mortality rate has been falling since 2003, according to the Robert Koch Institute, around 11,000 men still died of prostate cancer in 2008 [Robert Koch Institute 2012]. It becomes clear that prostate cancer is a disease that also has great health economic importance. With the development of new effective drugs, the survival of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer has improved significantly. In a study recently presented by the Institute of Cancer Research, a patient group of 442 patients showed a median survival of 31 months, which is significantly longer than the overall survival that could be derived in previous studies and based on nomograms, which was 18 months (Halabi) and 21 months (Smaletz) (Fig. 1 [Omlin et al. 2013]). If one also looks at the estimated survival of 6 to 10 months for these patients in the therapeutic era before docetaxel was approved in 2005, one can see that survival has now more than doubled.

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