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Genitourinary Cancer

Immunotherapeutics in Development for Prostate Cancer

Department of Medicine, University of California – San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

Key Words. Castration-resistant prostate cancer • GM-CSF • Immunotherapy • Phase II • PROSTVAC^TM • GVAX® • Ipilimumab • Sipuleucel-T

Correspondence: Andrea L. Harzstark, M.D., Department of Medicine, University of California – San Francisco, 1600 Divisadero Street, Box 1711, San Francisco, California 94115, USA. Telephone: 415-353-7095; Fax: 415-353-7779; e-mail: Andrea.harzstark{at}ucsf.edu

Received November 5, 2008; accepted for publication February 28, 2009; first published online in THE ONCOLOGIST Express on April 2, 2009.

Disclosures: Andrea L. Harzstark: None; Eric J. Small: None.

The content of this article has been reviewed by independent peer reviewers to ensure that it is balanced, objective, and free from commercial bias. No financial relationships relevant to the content of this article have been disclosed by the authors or independent peer reviewers.

Whereas chemotherapy is the standard of care for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and is associated with a survival benefit, there remains a need for alternative approaches. Extensive work has been done evaluating multiple immunotherapies for the treatment of prostate cancer. This review discusses clinical results for the most promising developments. These include cytokine-based therapy with GM-CSF; vaccines; antibody-based immunotherapies, including anti–cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4 therapy and antibodies against additional targets; and dendritic cell-based immunotherapy.