Dr. Shore on Immunotherapies for Prostate Cancer

Neal D. Shore, MD, FACS, Medical Director, Carolina Urologic Research Center, Myrtle Beach, gives an overview of the development of immunotherapies for patients with prostate cancer.

Shore believes that the oncology community is getting close to significant breakthroughs in this space. In 2010, sipuleucel-T represented a tremendous breakthrough as the first immunotherapy approved for any metastatic solid tumor. As ipilimumab has been approved for metastatic melanoma, Shore notes that he's excited for data from two phase III trials looking at ipilimumab in advanced prostate cancer.

Unlike sipuleucel-T, ipilimumab is a checkpoint inhibitor, Shore says, and takes the break off of the immune system to let the T cells work in an unchecked way. PROSTVAC is similar to sipuleucel-T in that it is a T cell potentiator, directly stimulating T cells to work more effectively.

Shore says he is excited about preliminary studies exploring better checkpoint inhibitor therapies with fewer side effects and the possibility of combining immunotherapies.

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