FDA Approves Prostate Cancer Drug

A first-of-its-kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to fight the disease has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dendreon Corp.’s Provenge vaccine, which trains the immune system to fight tumors, is intended to treat cancer that has spread elsewhere in the body and is not responding to hormone therapy. Provenge is made by taking immune cells from a patient’s blood and exposing them to a protein found in most prostate cancers, which encourages the cells to attack the cancer. It is given intravenously, with a total of three doses given approximately once every two weeks. Possible side effects include chills, fatigue, fever, back pain, nausea, joint ache and headache, according to the FDA.