Prostate cancer vaccines: an old yet novel target, the androgen receptor

Evaluation of: Olson BM, Johnson LE, McNeel DG. The androgen receptor: a biologically relevant vaccine target for the treatment of prostate cancer. Cancer Immunol. Immunother. doi:10.1007/s00262-012-1363-9 (2012) (Epub ahead of print). Cancer vaccines have been utilized as a therapeutic modality to treat prostate cancer in clinical studies for several decades. Recently with the approval of sipuleucel-T, vaccines have now been accepted as standard therapy for this disease. The androgen receptorhas long been recognized as a therapeutic target for the treatment of patients with locally advanced as well as metastatic disease. Recent preclinical studies described by Olson et al. have focused on the androgen receptor as a target for prostate cancer immunotherapy. They have developed and tested a DNA vaccine targeting the ligand-binding domain of the androgen receptor and have demonstrated in animal studies the ability to elicit T-cell responses towards the vaccine that have resulted in both antitumor activity as well as increased survival in the animal models described.