Gene therapy for prostate cancer: Current status and future prospects

Prostate is an ideal target organ for gene therapy as a translational research. It has some advantages as follows: prostate is not a life keeping organ, can be approached easily by ultrasound as a routine clinical practice and PSA is a sensitive and useful tumor marker for the evaluation of clinical response. Intraprostatic therapeutic gene transduction (in situ gene therapy) is one of the potent therapeutic options for prostate cancer gene therapy aiming at antimetastatic benefits through the generation of immune cell-mediated cytotoxic activities that affect not only the primary tumor but also metastatic lesion. In this chapter, current outcome and future prospect of prostate cancer gene therapy are discussed.