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.