Gene therapy for prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in the western hemisphere. A number of different gene therapy strategies are currently being evaluated. The ex vivo and many of the in vivo therapies involve stimulating a specific antitumor immune response. Autologous vaccines involving interleukin-2 (IL-2)- or granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-transduced whole tumor cells showed great promise in animal models. Clinical trials of these and other vaccine strategies are underway. In vivo gene therapies involving the replacement of mutant tumor-suppressor genes, antisense strategies, and the insertion of suicide genes are also being evaluated in prostate cancer.