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Review
. 2022 Feb 24;10(3):537.
doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10030537.

Immunotherapy in Advanced Prostate Cancer: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

Affiliations
Review

Immunotherapy in Advanced Prostate Cancer: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

Fernando López-Campos et al. Biomedicines. .

Abstract

The advent of immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), likely due to the heterogeneous and immune-suppressive microenvironment present in prostate cancer. The identification of molecular biomarkers that could predict response to immunotherapy represents one of the current challenges in this clinical scenario. The management of advanced castration-resistant prostate cancer is rapidly evolving and immunotherapy treatments, mostly consisting of immune checkpoint inhibitors combinations, BiTE® (bispecific T-cell engager) immune therapies, and chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) are in development with promising results. This review analyses the current evidence of immunotherapy treatments for mCRPC, evaluating past failures and promising approaches and discussing the directions for future research.

Keywords: advanced prostate cancer; cancer vaccines; immune checkpoints inhibitors; immunotherapy; metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Immunotherapy treatment strategies in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison between the mechanisms of BiTE and CAR in T cells to activate (1) these lymphocytes after the recognition of the corresponding tumor associated antigen TAA. After activation, these T cells exert an antitumoral effect (2), mainly through cytotoxicity.

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