Immunotherapy & Tageted Therapy

Immunotherapy uses medicines that stimulate the body's immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells more effectively. For prostate cancer, the main FDA-approved immunotherapy is sipuleucel-T (Provenge), a therapeutic vaccine designed specifically for each patient. Unlike traditional vaccines that prevent disease, sipuleucel-T is a treatment vaccine that helps the immune system fight existing cancer. The treatment involves removing immune cells from the patient's blood, exposing them to a protein found in most prostate cancers, and then infusing the activated cells back into the patient. Other immunotherapy approaches, including checkpoint inhibitors, are being studied in clinical trials for prostate cancer, particularly for tumors with specific genetic characteristics.