Prostate cancer's complexities of causation, detection, and treatment challenge researchers.

Abstract

EFFICACY testing is under way in Seattle, Wash, with an experimental vaccine that, it is hoped, will stimulate the immune system to combat metastasizing adenocarcinoma of the prostate. Gerald P. Murphy, MD, DSc, director of research, Pacific Northwest Cancer Foundation, told a recent American Cancer Society (ACS) meeting in Reston, Va, that the phase II trial began earlier this year at Seattle's Northwest Hospital. This trial involves 67 volunteers—35 men whose cancer has spread beyond the prostatic bed and is resistant to hormone therapy and 32 with evidence (rising prostate-specific antigen [PSA] levels) of local cancer recurrence after initial surgery or radiotherapy. Earlier, Murphy and colleagues conducted phase I clinical acute or chronictoxicity trials with 51 volunteers whose advanced prostatic cancer had not responded to currently available forms of treatment. These men were divided into 5 groups, each of which received a variation of the vaccine regimen. In an unexpected