Contemporaneous and upcoming trends in immunotherapy for prostate cancer: review

Abstract

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common cancer in men worldwide. It affects more than 1.4 million men worldwide and kills up to 37 5000 people. PCa is routinely managed with chemotherapy and androgen deprivation therapy, but the success rate of these treatments is unsatisfactory. Immunotherapy is a novel method of treating different types of cancers, and it utilizes the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. Different types of cancer respond differently to immunotherapy, with some showing excellent responses, while others do not show very satisfactory responses. PCa is known to be an immunologically cold tumor, such that conventional immunotherapy does not work as effectively as it works in other cancers. In the past decade, multiple studies and trials have been conducted to test different types of therapies, ranging from immune checkpoint inhibitors to anticancer vaccines to anticancer cytokines. Even after many studies, there is still a drug to be discovered that can completely cure any stage of PCa. Recent immunotherapeutic drug trials have started using immunotherapy in conjunction with chemotherapy and radiotherapy and have shown promising results. In this paper, the authors present a comprehensive overview of the currently used immunotherapeutic drugs as well as emerging immunotherapies, including modalities of combination immunotherapy with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. This review can help readers gain the latest knowledge about emerging trends in the current immunotherapy landscape for the treatment of PCa, as well as a general overview of the already used immunotherapy drugs for PCa.