[Active immunotherapy of prostate cancer with a focus on dendritic cells]

Recurrent or metastatic prostate cancer is generally considered an incurable disease. Given the transient benefit from hormone deprivation therapy and limited successes of systemic chemotherapy, alternative treatment modalities are needed both in the situation of PSA recurrence and in hormone-refractory disease. Prostate cancer cells express several tumor associated antigens which are currently being evaluated as targets for active and specific immunotherapy approaches. Dendritic cells (DC) are the most powerful antigen-presenting cells (APC), able to prime naive T cells and to break peripheral tolerance and thus induce tumor immune responses. Close to 1000 prostate cancer patients have been treated with DC-based or other forms of active immunotherapy to date. Vaccination-induced immune responses have been reported in two thirds of DC trials, and favorable changes in the clinical course of the disease in almost half of the patients treated. Most responses, however, were modest and transient. Therefore, mechanisms of treatment failure and possibilities to improve vaccination efficacy are being discussed.