Immunology and immunotherapy approaches for prostate cancer

Several mechanisms that impair the immune response to promote tumour progression are reported. These mechanisms aim to reduce the ability of antigen-presenting cells to present antigen and activate naive T cells to support an active immune response or to create a suppressive environment that induce non-functional tumour-associated antigen-specific T cells. Prostate cancer ( PC) alone accounts for 33% of incident cancer cases and about 9% of all cancer-related deaths among men in the USA during 2006. Whereas androgen deprivation has remained the first line of therapy for advanced PC, other therapies are still required due to progression to an androgen-resistant state and eventually loss of control in patients receiving hormonal therapy. Immunotherapy seems to be a promising approach to enhance tumour-specific T-cell responses in different cancers including prostate. More importantly, clinical trials in advanced PC patients have shown that immunotherapy may generate significant clinical responses. Immunology and immunotherapy aspects of PC with focus on prostate-specific antigen will be presented.