Prophylactic vaccines for prevention of prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in men. There are various modalities for treatment of prostate cancer. Immunotherapy with several vaccines and antibodies has also been successfully used with positive clinical outcome in prostate cancer patients. The majority of these vaccines are palliative and have been employed when a person is already diagnosed with prostate cancer. The aim of this article is to review various vaccines that have been examined for immunoprophylactic prevention of initiation/development/metastasis of prostate cancer. The Pubmed database and Google Scholar search identified 26 articles on various vaccines that have been investigated for prophylactic prevention of cancer development. These vaccines targeted prostate-specific/restricted antigens (PSA/PSMA/PSCA), oncoproteins (GRP/MUC family, erbB2/HER-2/neu), whole tumor cell antigens, prostate regulating hormones (GnRH/testosterone), and various cytokines and immune modulators. The data indicates that the development of immunoprophylactic vaccines for prostate cancer is an exciting proposition, which can translate into a viable reality for clinical application in humans.