Has anyone undergone Dendritic Cell Therapy?

Hopefully others post with their information and recommended information resources. Mayo Clinic also has some researchers engaged on this topic. There are many online information resources, especially presentations by the leading PCa immunotherapy researchers, that provide both general overviews and more details for each of the types of immunotherapies, including Dendritic Cell (DC).

I have researched DC therapies and other PCa immunotherapies. My information gathering included attending conferences and corresponding (email and phone) with some of the leading PCa focused researchers in the US and Europe, but is not exhaustive .... you can find better sources of information. Updates are ongoing.

My overall learning is to be wary of any clinics that market DC immunotherapies for curing PCa. If it was successful, it would logically be much more broadly used, independent of whether or not it is covered by the specific health care insurance. My learning includes various clinics across the world that state they have unique patient-customized therapies. Ask for statistical data on all PCa patients tested.

(1) DC based PCs immunotherapies have been around for over 20 years. In 2010, a DC based immunotherapy named Sipuleucel-T (marketed as Provenge) was approved in the US. However, you do not often read about it, because the results were minimal (a few months) life extension. This included trials using a combination of DC and Chemotherapies. Pembrolizumab (marketed a Keytruda), another type of immunotherapy that is not DC based, was approved for medical use in the United States in 2014 and more recently used for PCa patients. However, Keystruda has already only been shown to be effective in the approx 5% of PCa patients with a specific PD-1L mutation. There a many other forms of PCa-specific immunotherapies being developed, because Provenge and Keytruda have not been broadly successful.

(2) All immunotherapies are dependent upon the PCa tumor mutations and, as a result, one of the first steps in considering immunotherapies is testing of the specific mutations in a person's prostate cancer.

(3) You can find a listing of all PCa clinical trials underway in the UK and, more specifically, those based upon immunotherapies. It is a bit tedious. The UK has several trials underway that include Keystruda, based upon what I saw earlier today when I checked the URL Links.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/prostate-cancer/research-clinical-trials?
Perhaps more importantly, through the contacts managing the trials at various locations, you can often learn much about the status of other PCa-focused immunotherapies and trials.

There are several online communities of PCa patients that have undergone immunotherapy treatments and will be willing to share their experience. If you don't find better sources of information, please feel free to message me and I will forward more detailed information and/or links to resources.

@jsh327 Hi, I apologise for my tardy thanks for all the information you have given, but I have only just found the response! The information is extremely helpful. We have embarked on Peptide Immunotherapy at great cost, alongside radiotherapy and chemo, additrionally to daralutamide and Zolodex. We went to Lithuania to a clinic called Innovita ' the oncolgist was convincing, but it is difficult to tell.
We have no idea whether or not this has been helpful as our Oncologist will not request a scan as deemed unecessary , preferring blood results to guide them. Thank
you again for your kind response.Wendi

@rleech No apologies ever needed. I respect the journey that you and your husband are undergoing.

There are more knowledgeable people in this forum and Mayo Clinic about immunotherapies, but I can offer from my experience that best practices include blood monitoring (PSA and in the UK, PSE), PSMA PET scans, and immune cell ( T-cell, B-cell, etc) monitoring , along with usual other blood markers to ensure that the immune system is positively responding to treatment. It is important with any immunotherapy to monitor the overall immune system’s response and your medical oncologist will know the tests required in order to achieve that objective.

Peptide based immunotherapies are not new, although not common for prostate cancer, and require characterizing the existing PCa mutations.

The UK has several advanced research laboratories specialized in PCa immunotherapy development. I encourage UK patients who have exhausted standard of care treatments to consider UK based clinical trials specific to PCa that require germline and somatic tests in advance. In particular, the PCa immunotherapy research teams are a great source of information on all previously attempted PCa immunotherapies. They develop a deep understanding of what has been effective and what is not effective, and why.

Best wishes.

Thank you so very much for taking the time to pass on information . Much appreciated, especially on a day when my husband is 'under the weather', but we are in Switzerland overlooking the beautiful mountains, so not all bad!
Best wishes
Wendi