New approaches to identification of antigenic candidates for future prostate cancer immunotherapy

Prostate cancer is currently the most commonly diagnosed malignancy, and the second leading cause of cancer-related death, of men in the United States. There is a great deal of interest in the development of molecularly targeted approaches, including immunotherapies, to the treatment of prostate cancer. Immunotherapies can be broadly classified into passive and active treatments. Passive approaches generally involve the infusion of monoclonal antibodies with specificity to a desired target antigen, or adoptive transfer of antigen- or tumor-specific lymphocytes. Vaccines represent an active immunotherapeutic approach in which the goal is to elicit, rather than exogenously supply, antigen-specific antibodies or lymphocytes. In this article, we review recent developments and methods for the identification of antigens for both passive and active immunotherapies. In addition, we highlight some of the current ongoing clinical applications of several of these approaches.