Promising Treatment For Prostate Cancer

According to a news release from Dendreon Corp., a Seattle biotech company, an experimental treatment has prolonged the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer in a phase 3 clinical trial.

Prostate cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, with more than one million men affected in the United States.  Each year there are about 186,000 new cases and over 28,000 men die because of the disease.

The phase 3 trial involved 512 men with metastatic, androgen-independent prostate cancer.  It was done after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined to approved the vaccine after an earlier trial, requesting more data.

The vaccine, called Provenge, is a therapeutic vaccine that would treat cancer by training the immune system to fight tumors.  If approved, it would be the first treatment of it’s kind on the market.  

Dendreon will be revealing the results of the IMPACT study at the American Urological Association’s annual meeting in Chicago later this month.  IMPACT stands for IMmunotherapy for Prostate AdenoCarcinoma Treatment.