The Twelfth International Conference on Progress in Vaccination Against Cancer (PIVAC 12), Nottingham, UK, 11–13 September 2012: insights into the dynamics of anti-tumour immunity and the development of cancer vaccines

Excerpt

The 12th Annual Conference on Progress in Vaccination against Cancer (PIVAC) which was hosted by Nottingham Trent University attracted over 120 delegates from across the cancer immunology community for 3 days of engaging discussion on current opinions and future challenges in the field of cancer immunotherapy. This conference series has provided a continuing forum for discussing current research and showcasing the exciting new steps that are being taken towards the application of new immunotherapy-based treatments for cancer. PIVAC 12 highlighted the important role of the tumour microenvironment (TME) in suppressing local immunity, the need for combinatorial approaches for patient management, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, new approaches towards developing anti-tumour vaccines incorporating new epitopes, novel vaccine delivery vectors, modified, altered or multiple peptides, as well as engineered T cell receptors (TCRs) and T cells. This meeting also underlined improvements in dendritic cell (DC)-mediated vaccine delivery and the emerging role of natural killer (NK) cells as key effector cells for tumour immunity. …