Prostate Cancer – Treatment Options

Transcript

There are what we call immune checkpoint inhibitors. These inhibitors are an important part of the immune system and it gives the body the ability to keep itself from attacking other normal cells. To do this, it uses checkpoint proteins on immune cells that need to be turned on or off to start an immune response. Cancer cells sometimes use these checkpoints to avoid being attacked by the immune system, but newer drugs that target these checkpoints hold a lot of promise as cancer treatments. Chimeric antigen receptors or CAR-T-cell therapy. In this treatment, immune cells called T-cells are removed from the patient’s blood and altered in the lab so that they have receptors called chimeric antigen receptors or CARs on their surface. These receptors can be made to attach to proteins on the surface of prostate cells. The altered T-cells are then multiplied in the lab and put back into the patient’s blood. The hope is that they can find the prostate cancer cells in the body and launch a precise immune attack against them.