Therapeutic cancer vaccine fulfills the promise of immunotherapy in prostate cancer

摘要

For many years, preclinical and clinical studies have attempted to harness the power of the immune system and focus it on malignant cells in an attempt to improve clinical outcomes for patients with cancer. The current paper describes the landmark phase III trial that led to the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of a therapeutic cancer vaccine. In a randomized trial of 512 patients, those treated with sipuleucel-T survived for 25.8 months compared to those treated with placebo, who survived 21.7 months (hazard ratio 0.78; p = 0.03). There was, however, no change in time to progression, which may speak to the underlying mechanism of this new class of therapeutics.