Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 6-23-2022

Abstract

Immunotherapy is the study of immune oncology which refers to utilizing the body’s innate immune system as a medical treatment directed towards cancerous cells to prevent, control, or fully treat cancer. There are several subgroups of immunotherapy, such as checkpoint inhibitors, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, cytokines, immunomodulators, cancer vaccines, and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs or MoAbs. Checkpoint inhibitors are drugs that force the cell cycle into a hard stop by inhibiting the natural immune checkpoints in cells. By preventing the apoptotic effects of cancerous cells on immune cells, T cells are spared and may proceed to attack cancer cells. For our research purposes, we focused on prostate cancer as the target organ for these checkpoint inhibitors. According to the American Cancer Society, there were roughly 268,490 new cases of prostate cancer and roughly 34,500 deaths from prostate cancer in 2021. The high prevalence and mortality of prostatic cancer in men justifies the need for further study of medical treatments such as immunotherapy. Thus far, our literary review has found that anti PD-1 combined with anti-lymphocyte-activation gene 3 (anti-LAG-3) therapy could be used to overcome PD-1 resistance mechanisms in prostate cancer. Upon further review, we also found that a combination of anti–CTLA-4 Ab (ipilimumab; Bristol-Myers Squibb) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) could be used to overcome the CTLA-4 immune checkpoint resistance. This combination therapy reduces the amount of prostate cancer cells because it increases the pre-existing immune responses of serine/threonine-protein kinase PAK 6 antigen. This literary review will focus on the application of several other forms of immunotherapy for immune checkpoint resistant prostatic cancer. Our research will compile and define these mechanisms to aid in the development of personalized immunotherapeutic healthcare for prostate cancer.

Academic Level

medical student

Mentor/PI Department

Molecular Science

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