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Review
. 2020 Mar;9(Suppl 2):S284-S294.
doi: 10.21037/tau.2019.08.09.

Evolving therapies for Peyronie's disease: how can we work towards new drugs?

Uros Milenkovic  1   2 , Jolien Duponselle  1 , Trinity J Bivalacqua  3 , Maarten Albersen  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Evolving therapies for Peyronie's disease: how can we work towards new drugs?

Uros Milenkovic et al. Transl Androl Urol. 2020 Mar.

Abstract

Peyronie's disease (PD) is an idiopathic chronic fibrotic disease that causes a penile curvature (PC), subsequent erectile dysfunction (ED) and impaired sexual intercourse in patients. As of yet, there are no reliable non-surgical treatment options available. Intralesional injection with collagenase Clostridum Histolyticum has been FDA approved since 2013, but post-approval studies have not been unanimously positive. Moreover, it renders a curvature improvement of only 30% on average, usually still requiring surgical intervention to remedy PC. Therefore, there is a need for drugs which could prevent surgery altogether. Development of new drugs can either be through a target-based or phenotypic assay-based approach. The current in vivo model for PD is dependent on treatment of primary PD-derived fibroblasts with transforming growth factor-β1. Moreover, despite the existence of a genetic in vivo PD model, it does not allow for drug screening or testing. While some advances have been made in the past few years, new in vivo and in vivo systems and well-designed studies are urgently needed for the non-surgical treatment of PD.

Keywords: Peyronie’s disease (PD); drug development; fibrosis; injection therapy; medical treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: The focused issue “Contemporary Issues and Controversies in Men’s Health” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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