PCF is delighted for patients that Provenge has been approved for use in patients with advanced prostate cancer by the FDA. It is the first of several promising immunotherapeutic agents to make it to the clinic.

"This is a 'breakout' not a 'breakthrough' for treatment of patients," said Dr. Jonathan Simons, CEO of PCF.

"A breakthrough would be curing men; the breakout in our thinking is that some patients can live months longer with inducing their immune systems to fight their metastatic disease. Now the field gets to build upon and improve the micromanagement of the prostate cancer patient's immune system to fight their disease. Also, the concept that some day we could develop a preventative vaccine against developing prostate cancer in the first place gets a big scientific boost," said Simons.

The approval of Provenge validates 16 years of PCF research funding to identify and then harness cells in a patients' immune system to fight prostate cancer and prolong life. Since 1993, PCF has invested nearly $2 million as venture philanthropy to support dendritic cell vaccines and immunotherapy research. In the case of Provenge, PCF first provided funding to Dr. Eric Small at the UCSF in 1999 (within the PCF Clinical Therapy Consortium) to support clinical research around measuring immune responses in patients treated with Provenge (sipuleucel-t). Dr. Small's academic investigations in UCSF patients provided early scholarly preliminary data contributions to the development of Provenge by Dendreon. Results of that PCF-supported research and a placebo-controlled clinical trial were published by Dr. Small and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in July 2000.

PCF's initial research investment has helped deliver an important new therapy for prostate cancer patients with advanced metastatic disease and contributed to the growth of Dendreon, a biomedical startup. (Dendreon is currently funding an unrestricted research grant for a three-year PCF Young Investigator to study immune biology in prostate cancer).

PCF itself is redoubling its research grant efforts to expand a scientific understanding of why certain patients benefit from immunotherapy agents such as Provenge while others do not. We need a better understanding how the human immune system can be stimulated so it can help cancer patients survive longer. Going forward, this data in advanced prostate cancer patients might also help patients with many other forms of life-threatening, metastatic cancers.