This page summarizes frequently asked questions about dendritic cell therapy, which utilizes immunotherapy and dendritic cells for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Strictly speaking, this is not a vaccine, in that vaccines are intended to keep people from catching diseases, whereas this therapy is intended to fight an illness that is already established. However, the approaches are similar in that they utilize your own immune system to identify and kill malignant prostate cancer cells throughout the body.
Dendritic cells are cells found in the bloodstream of everyone.
They normally function as one of nature's most efficient immune function cells. Their usual function is to identify foreign substances, such as cancer cells, process these foreign substances, and then jumpstart the immune response by bringing these foreign substances to the attention of T cells. T cells which have been activated in this fashion are then capable of circulating throughout the whole body and destroying tumor cells. Unfortunately, left alone, dendritic cells are not very effective at jumpstarting the immune surveillance system. However, laboratory tests have shown that when dendritic cells are grown in the presence of a synthetic copy of the foreign materials of interest, a strong immune response can be initiated.