The paper below is a good overview on Provenge. What bothers me is that there was no significant effect on time to disease progression a negative....overall survival was increased by 4 months a positive. What I would want to know is could Provenge treatment effect the immune system in a way that could make newer immune treatments in the pipeline less effective.
Gus
This is true. With Provenge neither the PSA is affected nor do we see a change in disease progression. This is because Provenge takes a good number of months before it actually starts having an effect on the immune system.
Theoretically, by the time we are able to see an affect on either the PSA or disease progression we have gone on to another treatment so that we would not be able to know which treatment has given us a positive result.
This delay does not mean that the treatment does not have a positive affect.
Joel
Also, Provenge does not increas life by an average of 4 months. The increase of 4 months is the median survival advantage. The Provenge survival curves are not standard bell curves. The survival curves are skewed significantly towards the survival side, the survival curves have an amazingly long tail. This is not a minor point given that 1/2 of men (in the trial) had an even larger survival experience with some going out in a very long time.
Joel
Provenge Alternatives?
Provenge immunotherapy
To Provenge or not?
Provenge 
Mechanism for Provenge suggested
