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In US, prostate cancer is quite common and more than 200,000 new cases are discovered every year. Asymptomatic metastatic HRPC is known to be resistant to hormone therapy used in early detected prostate cancers and no other treatment is effective against it. A new study has been made in California in order to see if the prostate vaccine against cancer is really useful. In July1, 2006 the Journal of Clinical Oncology published the first conclusions of this research. Scientists said that the rate of survival increased by four and a half months in those who were administered the cancer vaccine compared with those who got the placebo. The study was made on patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) and was designed for observing if the disease progression will be delayed and patients will survive longer. The vaccine was well tolerated by patients and the side effects were mild: fever and chills. Eric J. Small, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and urology, along with other 19 US institutions conducted the study which was funded by the Dendreon Corporation (the developer of the vaccine) based in Seattle, Washington. Small declared that this trial is an important one because it will open the way to other treatments regarding prostate cancer. The vaccine, called Sipuleucel-T was created to stimulate T-cell immunity to prostatic acid phosphatase. 127 patients were included in the study. Every two weeks they were meant to receive three transfusions of sipuleucel-T or placebo. The conclusions were that 115 patients of this group had progressive disease at the time of data analysis and all patients were followed for survival for 3 years. For those treated with sipuleucel-T the median rate of survival was 25.9 months. For those who got a placebo treatment, the overall of survival was 21.4 months. Small declared that: “We found that the time to disease progression for sipuleucel-T was 11.7 weeks compared to 10.0 weeks for placebo”, showing that there are difficulties in using the disease progression as an intermediate marker for median survival of the affected people treated with immunotherapy. The conclusions were that sipuleucel-T gives a survival advantage to patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC). These were the results for phase III trial. The study for Phase I and II were also taken by Eric J. Small to be conducted at UCSF and everybody is anxious to hear the conclusions. For more information about prostate cancer symptoms and about early symptoms prostate cancer please review this web site http://www.prostate-cancer-center.com
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