BATON ROUGE — Prostate cancer that spreads beyond the prostate is known as stage 4 or metastatic prostate cancer.

There's a variety of treatments – including hormonal treatments that can help control the disease.

"Once the hormonal therapies begin to fail, then we have a new term, and we call it castrate-resistant. Now metastatic means spread, so if it's spread and it's resistant to the hormones, that's metastatic castrate-resistant," Oliver Sartor, a medical oncologist with the Mayo Clinic, said.

Sartor says PSMA lutetium-177, the chemical name for Pluvicto may be an option for some patients.

"We have to do a scan to be able to determine eligibility because we only want to treat the people that have good PSMA uptake. PSMA stands for prostate-specific membrane antigen, and we have a PET scan that can look at that very very specifically," Sartor said.

Once eligibility is confirmed, the therapy can be considered.

"It's a radioactive element. It's given intravenously on a short infusion. The FDA-approved regimen is to give it once every six weeks for a maximum of six doses," Sartor said.

Sartor says patients with advanced prostate cancer need a personalized treatment plan.

"And please remember that individualization of care is absolutely critical in this disease," Sartor said.