Current role of immunotherapy for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Chemotherapy is the conventional treatment for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) which provides only modest benefits. In the last few years, immunotherapy has emerged as an exciting therapeutic modality for advanced prostate cancer. Several characteristics of prostate cancer make it an ideal target for immunotherapy, and FDA approved recently sipuleucel-T based on improvement in overall survival (OS) in patients with CRPC. Current trials investigate the role of various immunological approaches in the treatment of prostate cancer, as far as the clinical benefit they provide is concerned and also deal with the issue of the measurability of this benefit. Future studies will focus on the combination of immunotherapeutic agents with conventional treatments in an effort to optimize patient outcomes.