Prostate cancer immunotherapy: the role for sipuleucel-T and other immunologic approaches.

摘要

For many years, the results of large randomized clinical trials of cancer vaccines have not been good. This was recently exemplified by the two randomized phase III clinical studies that evaluated GVAX. The first of these (VITAL-1) compared GVAX to docetaxel(Drug information on docetaxel) (Taxotere)/prednisone; the second (VITAL-2) compared GVAX with docetaxel to docetaxel/prednisone alone.[1] However, an important breakthrough in the field of tumor immunology has finally been achieved with sipuleucel-T (Provenge). This is exemplified by the results of the IMPACT phase III trial, which led to the recent FDA approval of the first therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of cancer.[2] Although other vaccines have come to market for the prevention of cancer (eg, cervical cancer), sipuleucel-T is the first such treatment approved for patients with active tumors.