GU Cast | Urology Podcast

Renu had been to an excellent Bayer Apex meeting in Europe in the past, so was very happy to hear Apex was coming to us for its first Asia-Pacific outing! A wonderful prostate cancer Faculty headlined by Neal Shore, Dan George, Derya Tilki, Fred Saad, Amit Bahl, Tamim Niazi to name but a few, plus almost 200 delegates from across the APAC region. 
Your usual hosts Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy catch up with some of the speakers and bring you conference highlights.
This is a Themed Podcast, supported by our Gold Partner, Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

Breaking News podcast just after the long-awaited PROTEUS trial reads out at the ASCO Plenary in Chicago! Plus a simultaneous NEJM paper! Huge day for prostate cancer surgery. 
Declan and Renu are joined by lead author Dr Mary-Ellen Taplin (Dana Farber Cancer Institute & Harvard University), to tell us about her decades long journey to this huge moment today. PROTEUS is a huge (2,100 men) phase III RCT of men undergoing radical prostatectomy for high-risk prostate cancer, randomised to receive peri-operative ADT + placebo, or ADT plus apalutamide. Mary-Ellen talks to us about the top-line results, and we consider whether this i...

Two interesting papers caught the eye of our GU Cast China team this week; the first is the ARASEC trial which Dr Rana McKay read out in the Practice-Changing Plenary at the AUA Annual Meeting in Washington. This is an interesting comparison of ADT + darolutamide  for mHSPC in a prospective US cohort, compared with an historical ADT-only control arm from CHAARTED. Interesting study design and interesting results. 
The second is the ADT Lead-In study led bu GU Cast China Editor, Dr Yao Zhu, which demonstrates how the timing of docetaxel chemotherapy in mHSPC can significnatly affect the likelihood of...

Now this is an interesting one, a new PSMA tracer which appears to greatly outperform 68Ga-PSMA-11 for biochemical recurrence. We discuss 64Cu-SAR-bisPSMA with Professor Louise Emmett (Nuclear Medicine Physician, Sydney), and Dr Matt Roberts (Urologist, Brisbane), which they compared head to head with trusty old 68Ga-PSMA-11 in the Co-PSMA trial, just published in European Urology.

With usual hosts Declan Murphy and Renu Eapen.

This Themed Podcast is supported by our new Bronze Partners, Clarity Pharmaceuticals

Even better on our YouTube channel

Links:
Co-PSMA trial in European Urology 

One of our most popular podcasts every year is when we chat with EAU Guideline gurus Derya Tilki and Gianluca Giannarini about the latest updates to the EAU Prostate Cancer Guideline. It is a 250 word document which is updated in March every year and changes are eagerly awaited around the world. 
We catch up with Derya (Vice Chair of the Prostate Cancer Guidleine Committee) in person in Melbourne, and with Gianluca (Vice-Chair of the EAU Guideline Office) online, about the latest updates. We also chat with Gianluca about the work of the Guideline Dissemination Committee which he has C...

Democracy in action! This month's GU Cast Journal Club papers were chosen by an audience vote at our GU Cast Live Event at EAU in London.
Therefore today we focus on first, the landmark proPSMA paper which established the superior accuracy of PSMA PET/CT for staging unfavourable intermediate and high-risk prostate cancer (Lancet 2020). Then for something completely different, we dig out a paper called "Penile fractures - the merry price of Christmas", published in BJUI 2020. Thanks very much to our live audience for this one!

We are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal...

The trial they said would never be done! Huge congrats to the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology who have recently opened the ASPIRE trial, a phase III randomised trial of ADT + apalutamide (doublet), vs ADT + apalutamide + docetaxel chemotherapy (triplet) for men with mHSPC. 1200 men will be recruited from more than 300 sites across the US with many sites already open and recruiting. This is the key trial which will answer the question of whether there is an overall survival benefit of adding chemo to the ADT/ARPI doublet which we all agree is standard of care.
We chat...

Our biggest live show to date! Taking to the huge eUro 2 auditorium at this month's EAU Annual Meeting in London, Declan and Renu bring you a fast-paced, high-energy session packed with favourite guests, controversial topics, behind-the-scenes stories, and lots of great giveaways, all boosted by having hundreds of our loyal supporters there in the audience with us.

Huge thanks to Maarten Albersen and all at the EAU Scientific Office for this invitation, and to everyone at MediAVentures, M-Events, Congress Consultants, Soma Studios and CMDM Media for helping us put it together. And to our own team including...

Big day at the EAU Annual Meeting n London today, as our colleague Dr James Buteau (Nuclear Medicine Physician, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne), reads out the PRIMARY 2 RCT at the Practice-Changing Plenary in London. Plus a simultaneous publication in Lancet Oncology. Big news for the early detection of prostate cancer, especially for patients with normal or equivocal MRI scans. 

Declan Murphy and Renu Eapen are joined by James and senior author, Prof Louise Emmett (St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney), to discuss the journey from our first PSMA PET/CT scans in 2014, to the proPSMA trial, the PRIMARY t...

We bring you highlights from a fantastic two day meeting at the ORSI Academy in Belgium, focussing on the hot topic of intra-operative margin assessment (IOMA), especially during prostate cancer surgery. Following on from the publication of the Neurosafe Proof RCT last year, there has been a surge in interest in new technologies to facilitate IOMA, in particular the Histolog confocal laser microscope (Samantree Medical).
Day one consisted of a Delphi consensus meeting with a gathering of world-leading experts in IOMA, discussing how novel technologies like Histolog can be used to assess surgical margins in real time, and...

Yes that's right, our great APCCC giveaway is back! We are sending three lucky winners to Lugano to attend the world's best prostate cancer meeting - the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference. Just send us a 60 second video to enter.
Closing date Fri 13th June 9pm GMT. Winners will be announced at the GU Cast Live Event at the EAU in London on Sun 15th March 2026.
Full details at gucast.org

Check out APCCC at apccc.org

Welcome to Episode 6 of our monthly GU Cast Journal Club! Two important papers in upper tract urothelial cancer (the POUT trial of adjuvant chemo post nephro-ureterectomy), and metastatic testicular cancer (the SEMS trial of surgery for early metastatic seminoma).

We are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal Club Editors, Dr Carlos Delgado (Melbourne, AUS), and Dr Elena Berg (Munich, GER), along with main GU Cast Hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy. No prostate cancer today, and go easy on Declan he is struggling with man flu!

Links to papers below:
1. Adjuvant chemotherapy...

It is the eve of the USANZ ASM here in Melbourne (which Renu is Convening!), and some of the 27 International guests are already into town. So we grabbed Anders Bjartell (Lund University/University Hospital Malmo, SWE), for a sit down chat in studio. Anders has been a huge name in prostate cancer research in Europe for the past couple of decades, including as a senior investigator on TITAN. so we decided to pick his brain on three topical areas in prostate cancer:
1. ADT/ARPI doublets in mHSPC - can we adopt an intermittent approach before the trials read...

Giant bladder cancer paper in NEJM this week with the highly anticipated results of the perioperative EV-Pembro trial (EV-303 / KN-905). Already we can say this is a landmark publicaion in bladder cancer that will change practice and even challenge the role of cystectomy (maybe)! 
Declan Murphy and Renu Eapen caught up with first author Christof Vulsteke (Integrated Cancer Centre, Ghent, BEL) when we were at ESMO Asia recently and had a chat about this work and how it will change practice. 

This is a Themed Podcast supported by our Platinum Partner, Astellas. 

E...

Following on from last week's episode on "toxicity", we are delighted today to welcome back two great friends of GU Cast from the world of radiation oncology - ASTRO President Dr Neha Vapiwala (University of Pennsylvania), and European Urology Associate Editor, Dr Amar Kishan (University of California, Los Angeles). We go through Amar and Neha's letter to the editor following the recent paper in Eur Urol Oncol from the IRRADIATE registry, and  dive into the opportunities we have working in multidisciplinary teams to look after our prostate cancer patients. Most enjoyable!

Even better on o...

In case you missed it, or you've already abandoned Twitter (memo to self - must do that ourselves!), we witnessed some pretty toxic stuff over there in the past couple of weeks. Vile personal attacks, calls for resignations, accusations of nefarious behaviour etc etc, mostly triggered by an AI-generated infographic attempting to illustarte a recent paper in European Urology Oncology. 
We chat with first author Dr Riccardo Bertolo (University of Verona, ITA), about his first-hand experience of twitter toxicity, his take on that terrible infographic, and ,most importantly, we discuss the paper which he and his colleagues published o...

Happy New Year and welcome to Episode 5 of our monthly GU Cast Journal Club! Today we focus on two classic papers in non-invasive bladder cancer and metastatic prostate cancer. The Lamm RCT of maintenance BCG is a landmark trial for all sorts of reasons, published in J Urol in 2000. And the CHAARTED paper of chemohormonal therapy is the landmark trial of combination therapy in mHSPC, published in NEJM in 2015.

We are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal Club Editors, Dr Carlos Delgado (Melbourne, AUS), and Dr Elena Berg (Munich, GER), along with main GU Cast...

Another of our special Themed Podcasts focussed on prostate cancer in China, supported by our Gold Partner, Bayer. We are joined as ever by our China Editor, Dr Yao Zhu (Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Centre), and also special guest Dr Yige Bao (SCU Xiamen Hospital). Not only do we learn about pandas in West China, but also some great highlights from the recent ESMO Annual Meeting in Berlin! Hosted as ever by Dr Renu Eapen and Prof Declan Murphy

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Episode 4 of our monthly GU Cast Journal Club and today we focus on two important papers in prostate cancer diagnostics and bladder cancer surgery. The PRECISION NEJM paper 2018 is a landmark publication which defined the role of mpMRI in early detection, and changed practice in many countries. The EB-StaR trial should also change practice after its European Urology 2024 publication, but has it??!

We are delighted to welcome back our GU Cast Journal Club Editors, Dr Carlos Delgado (Melbourne, AUS), and Dr Elena Berg (Munich, GER), along with main GU Cast Hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy. A...

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the world-famous ORSI Academy in Belgium! Declan and Renu travelled to this remarkable facility just outside Ghent in Belgium, jammed full of tens of millions of dollars worth of robotic surgery technology from the world's top providers - Intuitive Surgical, Medtronic, Microport and more. Every day, surgeons from all around the world are getting hands-on experience using the latest robotic surgery technology in an array of training environments. Plus ORSI Academy hosts many academic programs, live surgery events, telesurgery demonstrations, and is actually expanding to do even more! 
We get a superb tour o...

World-renowned sexual health expert, Dr Chris Nelson, Chief of Psychology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, joins us in studio to run through the new Movember-supported "Guidelines for Sexual Health Care for Prostate Cancer Patients". A really helpful overview and structure for anyone working in this field, and for patients and their loved ones. Chris shares his 20-plus years of experience working in this field at one of the world's premier prostate cancer centres.

Even better on our YouTube channel 

Links:
Movember Sexual Health Guidelines

We recently hosted another live webinar for our Gold Partners, Mundipharma,  this time asking the question, "Is high-risk BCR actually metastatic prostate cancer??". It's a reasonable question! This podcast was anchored from the GU Cast studio in Melbourne by usual hosts, Renu Eapen and Declan Murphy, joined in person by Andrew Loblaw, radiation oncologist from Toronto, and online by medical oncologist Jeff Goh in Brisbane.

Best enjoyed on our YouTube channel if you want to check out the slides. 

Runsheet:

Dr Amar Kishan (Radiation Oncologist, UCLA, USA), made lots of headlines recently when he presented data from the phase II randomised LUNAR trial of SABR +/- LuPSMA in patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer. So we were very happy when he turned up in Melbourne recently and popped into the GU Cast studio for a chat. We discuss metastasis-directed therapy and bring up our favourite Pokemet analogies, and ask should we not just be offering these patients and ADT/ARPI doublet?! 

Regular hosts Declan Murphy and Renu Eapen, also joined by Prof Wee Ong, Radiation Oncologist at Alfred H...

Fun today as we go to the OR to test drive some high-fidelity radical prostatectomy models and chat with the team behind UroTrainer - world leaders in urologic simulation. Urologists Gonzalo Vitagliano and Maxi Ringa join us from Buenos Aries to tell us all about UroTrainer and why they have worked hard to create these beautiful models for trainees to improve their skills in minimally-invasive prostate and kidney surgery. 

They also tell us about their range of hands-on courses around the world and their innovative remote laparoscopic training courses so trainees can do training from home w...

One of our favourite meetings of the year! The EAU Robotic Urology Section (ERUS) Annual Meeting took place in London recently and was an unashamed exposition of robotic surgery in urology. More than 30 amazing live surgeries, and some fantastic plenary sessions focussing on technical aspects. Multiple different robots, and spectacular telesurgery with surgeons sitting in London, performing robotic surgery up to 8000km away! 

Join Host Declan Murphy to get a flavour of this year's meeting, and to hear from many of the surgeons involved.

With thanks to our Silver Partners, Device Technologies.