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Prostate CancerArrow
Male 61 - 65
Interview 31  

Interview 31

Age at Interview: 65
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 59
Background:

Brief outline:Diagnosed with prostate cancer 1994, hormone treatment and vaccine trial.


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Describes his experience of the vaccine trials.

 



I then wrote to the [name] Hospital, to the consultant there who was doing the trial, and asked for more information about it. This was about 2 months after the trial had started. The trial was for 60 men to have the prostate cancer vaccine which had been devised. A similar vaccine had already been used on melanoma which had proved to be quite useful so I was encouraged to think well if it's worked on one cancer it may work on another. I got some written information about the trial, discussed it with my two daughters and they said 'Well if you're happy to go on it you know go for it.' I was told that I could come off that trial at any time I wished if I didn't feel it was doing any good I could stop the trial at any time. 

There were certain entry criteria for the trial that I had to fulfil. The main one was that I had to have a PSA of above 30 and rising and that I had to have had two hormone drugs that had ceased to work efficiently which I had. The only problem was that my PSA was just below 30 at that stage and wasn't rising so they said 'Well we can't take you until that happens.' So I had to start having regular monthly PSA tests until such time as my PSA went over 30 and carried on rising which eventually about 3 months later it did. So in July of last year I qualified for the trial and started on the trial. Because it was a trial things changed during it. I was originally told that we would have to go down to London every 4 weeks for the injections. The injections were 2 in the lymph nodes underneath the armpits and 2 in the groin at each side. That was okay, it wasn't too bad, there was just a slight stinging from the vaccine as it went in and then it was okay. Before the trial started I had to have some trial injections to find out if my skin would react to the vaccine at all and that was not the case, it didn't react so I was okay for going ahead with it. So we started work on the 4 weekly injections and I felt quite well, I felt my energy levels were increasing, I didn't feel as tired, I didn't feel as fatigued as I had done and I thought it was doing me good. I tried to get feedback from the consultant as to how they felt it was going but they were quite noncommittal, I think probably because it was a trial they didn't want to say too much about how they thought it was going. The only thing they did say was that they felt that the vast majority of men on the trial were feeling better and they seemed to be producing more cells to fight the cancer so that was encouraging news. And because I felt so well I assumed that I was one of the ones that was producing these cancer fighting cells.

Did they say much about how the vaccine had been developed and what was in it?

It was developed from dead cancer cells from other patients. There was a similar trial being conducted in America where the vaccine had been produced by taking the cells from the patients themselves but that was the difference between the two. I believe there's now a trial going on in Britain which does exactly the same thing as the American one where they take the dead cells from the cancer patients themselves, make the vaccine then re-inject it. There are currently additional trials going on as far as I'm aware, a new one at St George's, another one at Hammersmith Hospital in London. I don't know too much detail about those.

And how long does the trial go on for?

Well the trial, we were told initially that following 12 injections we were going to go down to 12 weekly injections but when it came to my turn to go onto the 12 weekly injections I was told that they'd changed their minds because they'd found that some of the men that had started before me were having adverse reactions to carrying on with the injections following the end of the 12, monthly ones. So they, they decided to change what they'd originally said and finished the vaccines after the 12 injections. So in July of this year I finished the injections. I immediately started having a reoccurrence of bone pain. Whether than was because I had stopped having the injections or whether it was coincidental I don't know.
Karol Sikora - Prostate cancer
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