If the protein is unique to prostate cancer cells, it could lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease and pave the way for development of vaccine therapy, Allison said. This is the first prostate cancer antigen found, Allison said. He announced the findings at Experimental Biology 2001, an international meeting of basic medical researchers sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. First, knowing what the specific target of the immune system is, we can do some very direct studies of whether it is a prognosticator of favorable outcome of disease. And second, we can start thinking about using the antigens to develop a specific vaccine.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men, after lung cancer.
That it was detected in mice that had become potentially resistant to therapy is another highlight. This is a very tight group of researchers and they do good work. Linehan also said that such an approach should prove far less traumatic to a man with prostate cancer because it narrows the area of treatment to just those cancerous cells rather than the entire organ. From one mouse survivor, they isolated immune cells, called T cells, which play the most important role in protecting the body from cancer, and used them to pluck the antigen out of the many proteins in prostate cells. The treatment they used is now in Phase I human trials at two hospitals in California.