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REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1478331
Unleashing the Power of Peptides in Prostate Cancer Immunotherapy: Mechanism, facts and perspectives peptides for targeted therapy and immunological regulation against prostate cancer: Mechanism, facts and perspectives
Provisionally accepted
Xiaoya Li 1
Fang Yang 2*
Meijing Wang 2 Xiaopeng Huang 2* Xin Zeng 1* Lu Zhou 1*
Sixue Peng 1
Jingyi Zhang 2- 1 School of Medical and Life Sciences, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
- 2 Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Regulation of Metabolic Diseases, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Prostate cancer, the second most common cancer in men, often progresses to castration-resistant prostate cancer despite androgen deprivation therapy. Immunotherapy, revolutionary in cancer treatment, has limited efficacy in prostate cancer due to its "cold tumor" nature. Peptides, with unique advantages, offer new hope. This review explores how peptide-based tumor immunotherapy can transform prostate cancer from a "cold" to a "hot" state. It modulates the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment by regulating non-immune cells (such as cancer-associated fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and adipose stromal cells), repolarizing tumor-associated macrophages, activating NK cells, and tuning cytokines. Additionally, peptides can induce immunogenic cell death(ICD) in prostate cancer cells through ferroptosis, pyroptosis, and autophagy modulation. The review also revisits existing prostate cancer immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint blockade, CAR T cell therapy, and dendritic cell vaccines, highlighting how peptides can enhance their effectiveness and safety. Finally, two peptide-based immunotherapy strategies in the development stage, peptideintegrated Proteolysis-Targeting Chimera therapy and peptide-involved epigenomic therapy, are introduced, showing great potential for future prostate cancer treatment.
Keywords: Prostate cancer1, peptide2, immunotherapy3, Tumor microenvironment4, immunogenic cell death5.prostate cancer1, therapeutic peptide2, target3, Immunity4
Received: 12 Aug 2024; Accepted: 10 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Yang, Wang, Huang, Zeng, Zhou, Peng and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Fang Yang, Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Regulation of Metabolic Diseases, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Xiaopeng Huang, Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Regulation of Metabolic Diseases, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Xin Zeng, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
Lu Zhou, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.