Towards customized cancer vaccines: a promising filed in personalized cancer medicine

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Cancer remains a major source of disease burden worldwide. Although cancer vaccines have been developed, most currently available cancer vaccines have limited therapeutic efficacy. Recent research using novel sequencing and bioinformatic tools has led scientists to realize that each tumor harbors a unique set of genetic mutations that can manifest as tumor-specific neoantigens. Therefore, it would be useful to develop personalized cancer vaccines that target neoantigens, which might improve the efficacy of these cancer treatments.

Areas covered

This review covers cancer vaccine development and the emerging field of personalized cancer vaccines, with a discussion of future clinical trials for this promising treatment strategy.

Expert opinion

Developing vaccines to treat tumors is one of the most promising and exciting fields in cancer research. However, cancer vaccines have shown limited efficacy in clinical trials for several decades, which may be related to the unique and complex processes underlying tumor development and progression. Recent studies have indicated that tumors express highly specific neoantigens, which are distinct from self-antigens. Thus, developing cancer vaccines that target these tumor-specific neoantigens is a promising strategy for developing personalized cancer vaccines.

KEYWORDS:

• Cancer vaccines
• tumor
• neoantigens
• personalized treatment
• mutations

Article highlights

• Cancer vaccines have been developed during recent years, and the efficacy of cancer vaccines for many solid tumors has attracted attention.

• Personalized immunotherapy using tumor-specific vaccines is a promising treatment strategy, and successful results from various personalized vaccines have created new hope for effective tumor immunotherapy.

• Therapeutic cancer vaccines, in combination with treatments targeting PD-1/PD-L1 and tumor microenvironment-related cytokines, may be a promising treatment strategy during the next 5–10 years.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [81802995], the Zhejiang Natural Science Foundation [LY16H160039], Zhejiang Province Public Welfare Funds [LGF19H280004], and the Medical Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province [2018RC020 and 2018KY024].