Vaccine Therapy For Prostate Cancer

Study Shows Provenge Can Ignite Immune System To Fight The Disease

(CBS)  When Eduardo Garcia's prostate cancer spread to his hip bone six years ago, his doctors decided to try something new. CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook reports that they injected him with a vaccine to ignite his immune system to fight the cancer. After three doses of a drug called Provenge, his cancer is in check.

"It worked for me, and it could work for many people in the future," Garcia says.

Vaccine therapy is a new frontier of cancer treatment. It doesn't require invasive surgery or toxic chemotherapy, with all its side effects.

Here's how it works: Tumors sometimes trick the body into thinking cancer cells are normal. Provenge tells the immune system that cancer cells are the enemy and should be attacked. One study shows that 127 patients with advanced prostate cancer survived an average of 4 1/2 months longer than those not on the drug.

"This is a very desperate group of patients who have no other options. The cancer has spread all over their body, so that four-month survival advantage really means a lot to these men," Dr. David Penson of USC says.

Right now, this vaccine is still experimental and only for prostate cancer that does not respond to hormone therapy.

Urologist Dr. Mitchell Benson says the vaccine is a step forward in the fight against prostate cancer.

"Where this is going to have the most applicability in the future is for the patient who has the very first signs of relapse where the amount of cancer in the body is not so great, and in that instance this could result in prolonged remissions," Benson explains.

Scientists also have been working on therapy to boost the immune the system to fight other kinds of cancers, reports Dr. LaPook. The drug maker expects the FDA will decide whether to approve this prostate cancer vaccine by May 15.

[jonweiner-2009]

As a correction, Dr. David Penson is with the Univ. of Southern California and he was misidentified in the story...unfortunately!

[alphaa10-2009]

Note the flurry of recent stories about drugs, vaccines and procedures which target specific types of cancer and/or aspects of cancer.

This suggests cancer is no longer a monolith to medical researchers, but a living entity, increasingly well-understood, with discrete components and definite vulnerabilities.

Such knowledge means medical research is on the cusp of a major advance in cancer treatment.

At the same time, stingy federal funding for medical research now has halted most progress, and is choking the life from these promising developments. While federal money for defense and space weaponry R&D got budget increases this year, medical research has suffered actual budget cuts.

Promising projects and studies are simply not possible under current Bush priorities. Current cost of Iraq occupation-- $ 8.4 billion per month.

[oigen]

As well as wasted war funding, orders of magnitude more of stingy research monies for medical cures are obscenely dumped into AIDS inc. coffers to find a cure for the phantom HIV than all other afflictions combined. More people perish from falling down stairs than they do from the so-called scourge of HIV while millions die prematurely from cancer and heart disease. It%u2019s time to end this medical funding fiasco for this phoney HIV=AIDS nonsense.

[me4prezz]

As well as wasted war funding, orders of magnitude more of stingy research monies for medical cures are obscenely dumped into AIDS inc. coffers to find a cure for the phantom HIV than all other afflictions combined. More people perish from falling down stairs than they do from the so-called scourge of HIV while millions die prematurely from cancer and heart disease. It%u2019s time to end this medical funding fiasco for this phoney HIV=AIDS nonsense.
Posted by oigen at 08:54 AM : Mar 30, 2007

Nonsense? Really.....hmmm...Well, to test that theory out, why don't you go to Africa where 1 in 3 people have HIV or AIDS and have them inject you with the virus and you can go on a campaign to prove that AIDS is a hoax. Go for it. We will all wish you well as your body slowly kills itself and you die alone and broken in a body infected with a virus that you claim is nonsense. Enjoy.

[tucano2]

This vaccine may be ok provided it is NOT manufactured by Merck