Immunological approaches for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Conventional therapies for patients with early-stage relapsed prostate cancer often do not provide an acceptable quality of life. These patients often have increasing PSAs as the sole manifestation of their disease recurrence and represent a unique subgroup of patients for whom alternative treatment strategies are needed. The patients are asymptomatic and may be an appropriate population for targeted immunological approaches. Vaccine therapies, based on synthetically constructed, naturally occurring prostate-associated antigens or genetically modified immune cells, offer exciting new approaches toward treating this disease with resulting antitumor effects and minimal toxicities. The results of clinical trials using these technologies reinforces the use of immunological approaches for the treatment of prostate cancer.