Immunotherapy

[Fight11]

Have any of you had immunotherapy with good success? Is this used as a last resort? Can you use it in conjunction with Zytiga?

[henukit]

It's been a standard of care to date to go through treatments sequentially: surgery, chemo, radiation, androgen receptors suppressors (2, 3 gen). And only when everything fails add immunotherapy. But the trend is changing now and immunotherapy is used in earler stages in combination with other modalities. Do some research and see what immunotherapy combination treatment you may qualify. There are quite a bit of great clinical trials going on. Get your genetic panel screening for mutations. This will show what treatments you may qualify even without clinical trial or off-label use. Also, see my posts on augmenting and reinforcing treatments. Good luck!

[Tall_Allen]

In general, immunotherapies for PC have been disappointing. Relative to most other kinds of cancer, prostate cancer is "cold" to immunotherapy.

There is only one kind of immunotherapy that has so far been found to be useful for most men with prostate cancer - Provenge. It is FDA-approved for anyone who is metastatic and castration resistant.

Keytruda is approved for a rare type of PC, called MSI-hi/dMMR. You would need a genomic test of biopsy tissue to tell if you have that.

There are many other kinds of immunotherapies and combinations of immunotherapies in clinical trials.

When to use them is a little tricky. As prostate cancer mutates, it expresses new antigens that may be vulnerable to immune attack, so that argues for using them later. Most clinical trials enlist men in this situation (and because they have results sooner). However, immune killing of cancer cells is more effective when tumors are smaller in number and size, so that argues for using them earlier. There is a clinical trial for Provenge in men using active surveillance for low grade localized PC.

[Magnus1964]

I was on Provenge and it worked well. I was not on any ADT drugs at the time but I do not see a problem with continuing xtandi while on Provenge.

[RayTrevitt]

I finished Provenge in April 2019 after HIFU, Lupron, radiation, doxetel, zometa, xtandi and now Zytiga + prednisone. I believe rhat Provenge has and will continue to make me live longer. Still on Lupron and Zometa. Dx in April 2016. Gleason 5-4, metastatic (had tumors in outer chest wall after chemo) cancer in iningual lymph nodes. Feeling better on Zytiga than on Xtandi. Very few side effects that actually bother me. My oncologist's goal is to keep me out of pain and as strong as possible for as long as possible. This thing is going to kill me but it isn't going to kill me today.

[HopingForTheBest1]

Had Provenge treatment in March 2019, early in my treatment regimen. No real way of knowing how helpful it really is, as it does not affect PSA. Throwing as much as I can at this deadly disease in the hope and expectation it will extend my life.

[j-o-h-n]

Keytruda working for my lung melanoma....

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Tuesday 07/28/2020 7:54 PM DST