Members of our department and UCSF colleagues in the fields of diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology and medical oncology are working with the most advanced therapies for this disease, including these treatments described below. Under the direction of Eric Small, MD, associate clinical professor of medicine and urology, UCSF is testing the use of a vaccine that investigators hope will prompt the body to launch an attack on the prostate tumor. To prepare the vaccine, patients undergo a routine outpatient medical process called apheresis, in which white blood cells, including immunologically active dendritic cells, are drawn from the blood. The dendritic cells are then combined in the laboratory with a prostate cancer antigen and reinfused into the body. The antigens prompt the patient's own T cells to attack the tumor cells.
Patients undergo three vaccine treatments given at one-month intervals.
Thus far, results have been extremely encouraging, according to Small. I clinical trial began at UCSF in May 1997 in a small number of men with advanced metastatic disease who did not respond to conventional treatment. The vaccine has shown no toxicity and produced dramatic immune responses as measured in laboratory studies in all 12 patients studied thus far. Whether these immune responses translate into clinical benefit remains to be seen. Now researchers are expanding the study to see if use of the vaccine can produce a positive clinical response in patients with less advanced cancers.