Immunotherapy for Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Current and Emerging Treatment Options

Urol Clin North Am. 2020 Nov;47(4):487-510. doi: 10.1016/j.ucl.2020.07.010. Epub 2020 Sep 28.

Abstract

The advent of immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment. Prostate cancer has an immunosuppressive microenvironment and a low tumor mutation burden, resulting in low neoantigen expression. The consensus was that immunotherapy would be less effective in prostate cancer. However, recent studies have reported that prostate cancer does have a high number of DNA damage and repair gene defects. Immunotherapies that have been tested in prostate cancer so far have been mainly vaccines and checkpoint inhibitors. A combination of genomically targeted therapies, with approaches to alleviate immune response and thereby make the tumor microenvironment immunologically hot, is promising.

Keywords: Checkpoint inhibition therapy; Immunotherapy; Preclinical models; Prostate cancer; Vaccines.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Animals
  • Antigens, Neoplasm / drug effects
  • Antigens, Neoplasm / immunology
  • Biological Products / administration & dosage*
  • Cancer Vaccines / administration & dosage*
  • Forecasting
  • Humans
  • Immunotherapy / methods*
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Middle Aged
  • Molecular Targeted Therapy / methods
  • Neoplasm Invasiveness / pathology
  • Neoplasm Metastasis / genetics
  • Neoplasm Metastasis / immunology
  • Neoplasm Staging
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / genetics
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / therapy*
  • Treatment Outcome
  • Tumor Microenvironment / drug effects*
  • Tumor Microenvironment / genetics

Substances

  • Antigens, Neoplasm
  • Biological Products
  • Cancer Vaccines