Effects of Androgen Ablation on Anti-Tumor Immunity
Abstract
Androgen Ablation (AA) constitutes the most common therapy for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. While initially effective at reducing tumor burden, most patients recur with androgen insensitive disease. There exists a clear need to augment the clinical efficacy of hormone-based therapies, and immunotherapy of prostate cancer represents one such promising approach. Data indicate that AA affects the immune system both systemically as well as at the prostate. There is also growing evidence in the literature the thymic reconstitution effects following AA. We had previously found that castration led to increase in tumor growth, possibly due to an increase in immune infiltrates. In the past year, we have repeated the experiments to determine the effects of castration on the induction and on the growth of existing tumors, examined the T cell infiltrates%in the prostate and prostate tumors following castration arid determined the effects of castration on the allo-stimulatory activity of DCs from lymph nodes. We conclude that AA alone does not generate an antitumor response of great significance. We propose to carry out vaccination using prostate-specific antigens in conjunction with AA to determine if AA can ultimately lead to a synergistic positive outcome for the immunotherapy of prostate cancer.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA443553
Entities
People
- W. M. Kast
Organizations
- University of Southern California