Adenovirus-based Immunotherapy for Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is a significant health problem for men in the United States. While useful treatment modalities are available, their therapeutic efficacies are limited and severe side effects remain a concern. Alternatively, immunotherapy represents one of the most valuable treatments by inducing immune response targeting tumor cells. Sipuleucel-T is the only FDA approved immunotherapeutic agent for the treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Overall survival benefit with sipuleucel-T is modest, and the research field of cancer immunotherapy is continuously expanding. Numerous methods designed to induce tumor-specific immunity are at various developmental stages in clinical and preclinical studies. Among such modalities, the use of adenovirus vector (Ad) as an immunotherapy agent to deliver tumor-associated antigens is an attractive and versatile vector system. In this review, we describe the potential use of Ad-vector for prostate cancer immunotherapy.