Abstract
Vaccine approaches for cancer differ from traditional vaccine approaches for infectious disease in tending to focus on clearing active disease rather than preventing disease. In this review, we provide a brief overview of different types of vaccines and adjuvants that have been investigated for the purpose of controlling cancer burdens in patients, some of which are approved for clinical use or in late-stage clinical trials, such as the personalized dendritic cell vaccine sipuleucel-T (Provenge) and the recombinant viral prostate cancer vaccine PSA-TRICOM (Prostvac-VF). Vaccines against human viruses implicated in the development and progression of certain cancers, such as human papillomavirus in cervical cancer, are not considered here. Cancers express “altered self” antigens that tend to induce weaker responses than the “foreign” antigens expressed by infectious agents. Thus, immune stimulants and adjuvant approaches have been explored widely. Vaccine types considered include autologous patient-derived immune cell vaccines, tumor antigen-expressing recombinant virus vaccines, peptide vaccines, DNA vaccines, and heterologous whole-cell vaccines derived from established human tumor cell lines. Opportunities to develop effective cancer vaccines may benefit from seminal recent advances in understanding how immunosuppressive barricades are erected by tumors to mediate immune escape. In particular, targeted ablation of these barricades with novel agents, such as the immune checkpoint drug ipilimumab (anti-CTLA-4) approved recently for clinical use, may offer significant leverage to vaccinologists seeking to control and prevent malignancy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Butterfield LH (2015) Cancer vaccines. BMJ 350:h988
Schlom J, Hodge JW, Palena C, Tsang KY et al (2014) Therapeutic cancer vaccines. Adv Cancer Res 121:67–124
Cheever MA, Allison JP, Ferris AS, Finn OJ et al (2009) The prioritization of cancer antigens: a national cancer institute pilot project for the acceleration of translational research. Clin Cancer Res 15:5323–5337
Hearnden C, Lavelle EC (2013) Adjuvant strategies for vaccines: the use of adjuvants within the cancer vaccine setting. In: Prendergast GC, Jaffee EM (eds) Cancer immunotherapy: immune suppression and tumor growth, 2nd edn. Elsevier, New York, p 655
Galon J, Costes A, Sanchez-Cabo F, Kirilovsky A et al (2006) Type, density, and location of immune cells within human colorectal tumors predict clinical outcome. Science 313:1960–1964
Angell H, Galon J (2013) From the immune contexture to the Immunoscore: the role of prognostic and predictive immune markers in cancer. Curr Opin Immunol 25:261–267
Sobol I, Thompson RH, Dong H, Krco C, Kwon ED (2015) Immunotherapy in prostate cancer. Curr Urol Rep 16:34
Kantoff PW, Schuetz TJ, Blumenstein BA, Glode LM et al (2010) Overall survival analysis of a phase II randomized controlled trial of a Poxviral-based PSA-targeted immunotherapy in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. J Clin Oncol 28:1099–1105
Jochems C, Tucker JA, Tsang KY, Madan RA et al (2014) A combination trial of vaccine plus ipilimumab in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients: immune correlates. Cancer Immunol Immunother 63:407–418
Madan RA, Mohebtash M, Arlen PM, Vergati M et al (2012) Ipilimumab and a poxviral vaccine targeting prostate-specific antigen in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer: a phase 1 dose-escalation trial. Lancet Oncol 13:501–508
Rezvani K, Yong AS, Mielke S, Jafarpour B et al (2011) Repeated PR1 and WT1 peptide vaccination in Montanide-adjuvant fails to induce sustained high-avidity, epitope-specific CD8+ T cells in myeloid malignancies. Haematologica 96:432–440
Rice J, Ottensmeier CH, Stevenson FK (2008) DNA vaccines: precision tools for activating effective immunity against cancer. Nat Rev Cancer 8:108–120
Stevenson FK, di Genova G, Ottensmeier CH, Savelyeva N (2013) Genetic vaccines against cancer: design, testing and clinical performance. In: Prendergast GC, Jaffee EM (eds) Cancer immunotherapy: immune suppression and tumor growth, 2nd edn. Elsevier, New York, p 655
Rossi GR, Mautino MR, Unfer RC, Seregina TM, Vahanian N, Link CJ (2005) Effective treatment of preexisting melanoma with whole cell vaccines expressing alpha(1,3)-galactosyl epitopes. Cancer Res 65:10555–10561
Rossi GR, Unfer RC, Seregina T, Link CJ (2005) Complete protection against melanoma in absence of autoimmune depigmentation after rejection of melanoma cells expressing alpha(1,3)galactosyl epitopes. Cancer Immunol Immunother 54:999–1009
Springett GM (2014) Novel pancreatic cancer vaccines could unleash the army within. Cancer Control 21:242–246
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Thomas, S., Prendergast, G.C. (2016). Cancer Vaccines: A Brief Overview. In: Thomas, S. (eds) Vaccine Design. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1403. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3387-7_43
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3387-7_43
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3385-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-3387-7
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols