Gene therapy for prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in the Western world and current therapies are of limited efficacy in advanced disease. Both ex vivo and in vivo gene therapy strategies offer exciting new possible approaches to the management of this disease. Ex vivo gene therapy involving interleukin-2 or granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor transduced whole tumour cell vaccines has shown great promise in animal models. The feasibility of in vivo corrective gene therapy involving the replacement of mutant tumour suppressor genes, antisense strategies and the insertion of suicide genes has been demonstrated in preclinical models. Several of these therapies are now entering phase I/II studies in patients with prostate cancer.