On May 18, 2025 it was formally announced that former President Joe Biden had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to bone. Speaking for all of us at the Sperling Prostate Center, our hearts go out to President Biden and his family.

How was he diagnosed? According to news reports, the President was experiencing some urinary symptoms for which he sought medical help. During an exam, a small nodule (bump) was found on his prostate. Further details were not made public, but subsequent tests would likely have included ultrasound imaging, possibly an MRI, and certainly a needle biopsy to determine if cancer is present, and if so to assign a Gleason score (sum of 2 numbers) to determine its risk level. The biopsy revealed an aggressive Gleason 9 prostate cancer (PCa), and additional imaging, perhaps a state of the art PSMA-PET scan, revealed spread to bone. In other words, the President’s PCa is no longer confined to the gland, or localized. Thus, metastatic PCa is considered incurable—but this is not necessarily a doomsday scenario.

Thankfully, there are many strategies to control the disease while at the same time preserving quality of life. For any patient newly diagnosed with metastatic PCa, a team approach is used to customize a treatment plan for each individual. The team may include the patient’s primary care doctor as well as specialists like a urologist, radiologist and oncologist (cancer doctor).

The team takes into account not just the PCa tumor(s), but the whole person. The patient’s age, medical/family history, any other current health conditions, and lifestyle are all important factors in making treatment choices.

Today’s treatments for advanced or metastatic PCa often use a combination approach, with doses and sequencing applied and adjusted as needed while the treatment effects and cancer control are carefully monitored. The general categories of therapies are:

• Hormone treatment (androgen deprivation therapy or ADT) for PCa that responds to it. This is an approach to block the effects of testosterone, which puts the brakes on cancer growth. Since PCa eventually overcomes ADT, a more recent approach is an on-again, off-again use called intermittent hormone therapy, which seems to extend the time before it no longer works.
• Combining hormone therapy with radiation – since hormone therapy stops cancer growth for a period of time, a decision may be sometimes made to radiate the metastatic tumor site(s) to control the PCa spread.
• Drug treatments include chemotherapy and new immunotherapies to target how PCa activity at the cellular or molecular level.
• Lifestyle practices (e.g., diet, exercise) that may have a preventive effect against cancer activity as well as help reduce the side effects of treatments.

We have every confidence that President Biden is in excellent hands. As a President who “reignited the Biden Cancer Moonshot to mobilize a national effort to end cancer as we know it,” he gave high priority to combatting all cancer, not just prostate cancer. He is no stranger to the threat of cancer and the need to eradicate it. In 2015, he lost his son Beau to lethal brain cancer, a loss no parent should have to endure.

Now President Biden will do all in his power to get the better of his prostate cancer. We wish him and his family best possible outcomes.

NOTE: This content is solely for purposes of information and does not substitute for diagnostic or medical advice. Talk to your doctor if you are experiencing pelvic pain, or have any other health concerns or questions of a personal medical nature.

Photo by Gage Skidmore