Abstract
Gene therapy has been administered to over 1,000 men with prostate cancer. Overall, it has been associated with little toxicity when administered as a single agent or in combination with standard prostate cancer treatments. Some strategies have generated very provocative results in early stage clinical trials. When administered intraprostatically to men with newly-diagnosed disease, adenovirus-based approaches have resulted in demonstrable tumor destruction, better-than-expected 2-year biopsy results when combined with prostate radiotherapy, and a slowing of disease progression following biochemical failure. In more advanced settings, poxvirus-based vaccines have been shown to bolster the effectiveness of subsequent chemotherapy thereby delaying the onset and progression of metastatic disease. Thus, gene therapy has demonstrated antitumor activity across nearly all disease settings particularly when combined with standard cancer therapies. These preliminary results are very encouraging and lead us to believe that gene therapy may someday earn a place in the management of prostate cancer.
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Freytag, S.O. et al. (2010). Gene Therapy of Prostate Cancer. In: Roth, J. (eds) Gene-Based Therapies for Cancer. Current Cancer Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6102-0_3
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