Mount Sinai Helps Develop New Prostate Cancer Treatment
Treatment harnesses immune system to defeat cancer cells.
Physicians at Mount Sinai’s Deane Prostate Health and Research Center have been instrumental in the development of a new treatment for advanced prostate cancer. Approved on April 29, 2010, by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this treatment, Provenge®, represents a significant scientific and clinical advance in that it harnesses a patient’s own immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. This is the first time such an approach has been approved for the treatment of any cancer.
Provenge® was approved for treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer who meet specific medical criteria, specifically widespread disease that has further advanced despite standard therapy.
How it works
Although Provenge has been described as a vaccine, it does not prevent prostate cancer. This is how it works:
1. Dendritic cells, which are responsible for initiating an immune response, are collected from a patient and sent to a manufacturing facility to be activated against prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP), a protein made only by prostate cells.
2. Three days later, the cells are infused back into the patient to result in an immune response against prostate cancer cells. Patients get three of these infusions three weeks apart.
In about half of all cases, patients experience flu-like side effects such as fever, chills, muscle aches and fatigue lasting as long as 48 hours.
Availability
The Dendreon Corporation, which developed PROVENGE, intends to make it available through approximately 50 medical centers nationwide that were approved clinical trial sites for the treatment. Mount Sinai is one of those centers. The Provenge trial here was conducted under the guidance of Simon J. Hall, M.D., Chairman, Department of Urology, and Director of the Barbara and Maurice Deane Prostate Health and Research Center.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 47,000 employees working across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and leading schools of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care from conception through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes more than 6,400 primary and specialty care physicians and 10 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals,” “Best in State Hospitals,” “World’s Best Hospitals,” and “Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2025-2026.
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