Immunotherapy For Prostate Cancer Treatment

In the battle against cancer, patients must take advantage of every available weapon. Treatments for prostate cancer can involve surgery to removed diseased cells, radiation to kill the cells and chemotherapy. These options can be effective, but they are also toxic. Today, we know that cancer treatment should also include other options, such as nutritional counseling, meditation and, potentially, immunotherapy.

Understanding immunotherapy and prostate cancer is relatively easy. Immunotherapy is the treatment of disease by inducing or suppressing an immune response from the body. The process relies on the body’s adaptive immune response to recognizing foreign antigens in the body (the cancerous cells) and stimulating a response from the immune system, allowing the body’s defenses to attack the malignant cells with the purpose of killing the diseased cells. With immunotherapy, no healthy cells or tissues are destroyed, nor is hormone production or immune system cell activity suppressed.

Currently, Provenge® (sipuleucel-T) is the only prostate cancer immunotherapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and it’s the first in a new class of therapy to use this approach. Immunotherapy is not appropriate for all patients, but it can be remarkable. Provenge can be viewed as a life-affirming treatment, and your healthcare provider may suggest immunotherapy under the following conditions:

• Cancer is asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. The patient has not experienced the pain of cancer, or the pain does not require heavy medication with narcotics.
• The cancer has spread beyond the pancreas, especially if cancer cells are found in the bones.
• The disease failed to respond to hormone therapies.

When treating prostate cancer, this option involves the use of the immune system to reject existing cancer by stimulating the patient’s immune system. Simply put, immunotherapy encourages the body’s natural resources to go to war against the invading disease cells. A healthy immune system reacts to foreign factors that come into the body, such as viruses and allergens.

The immune system can normally distinguish between self and non-self, but cancer cells trick the system. Because the tumor cells are actually produced in an individual’s body, they can grow, reproduce and spread without being noticed. Sometimes referred to as a prostate cancer vaccine, Provenge® teams with the body’s immune system to find and fight the cancers.

Treatment Procedures And Benefits

The treatment course takes five weeks and involves three procedures followed in three days with an infusion of Provenge. Each dose is unique and specifically formulated to a particular patient’s needs. Before treatment begins, a doctor will order a complete blood count to check blood cell levels and set you up for a process called leukapheresis, which collects cells. The samples are sent to a lab to be evaluated, and results are known in about two to three days. Findings are used to prepare the personalized dose, which is shipped to a designated infusion facility.

The goal and primary benefit of Provenge treatment is to help men with prostate cancer live longer. In a clinical study involving 512 men, Provenge reduced the risk of death in men by 22.5 percent. More specifically, the median survival for the 341 men who took Provenge was 4.1 months longer than that of the 171 men in the placebo group (25.8 months compared with 21.7 months). In addition, data from Dendreon Corporation note that at three years, 37.8 percent more patients treated with Provenge were alive when compared with controls.

Another benefit of Provenge treatment is that men who use Provenge can then go on to use other prostate cancer therapies. In fact, because Provenge stimulates the immune system, men who undergo this immunotherapy are often in better condition to handle immunosuppressive therapies, such as chemotherapy.

New Advances In Treating Prostate Cancer

Men today can choose from several options when fighting prostate cancer. In order to develop the most appropriate course of action, men should discuss the benefits and risks of each therapy with their doctors, families, insurance company and perhaps others who have experienced similar choices.

Zytiga is the only hormone therapy drug that stops hormone production in three sites: the testes, the adrenal glands and the prostate tumor itself.

Both Provenge and Zytia have been shown to extend overall survival; combination treatment appears to be a possibility for attacking on multiple levels.

Xtandi is the first drug of a new class called androgen inhibitors. Xtandi, a type of hormone therapy, interferes with the activity of testosterone when attempting to attach to prostate cancer cells. Prostate cancer cells need testosterone to reproduce and grow, and Xtandi helps prevent the hormone from assisting these functions.

Both drugs are used for advanced stages of prostate cancer that have spread despite hormone therapy. Xofigo is only for cancers that have spread to the bones and not other organs. It cannot be used with chemotherapy.

When diagnosed with prostate or any cancer, don’t panic. Explore the options and be aggressive in your fight.