PROVENGE (Sipuleucel-T) in Prostate Cancer: The First FDA-Approved Therapeutic Cancer Vaccine

Sipuleucel-T (PROVENGE; Dendreon) is the first therapeutic cancer vaccine to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In men who have metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with no or minimal symptoms, sipuleucel-T prolongs median survival by 4.1 months compared with results in those treated with placebo. At 3 years, the proportion of patients in the vaccine group who were alive was 50% higher than that in the control group (31.7% versus 21.7%, respectively). Sipuleucel-T, which is designed to elicit an immune response to prostatic acid phosphatase, uses the patient's own immune system to recognize and combat his cancer. Currently, no other agents are available that offer a survival…