Is there a role for therapeutic cancer vaccines in the age of checkpoint inhibitors?

ABSTRACT

Because of the recent success of monoclonal antibody checkpoint inhibitors, and the disappointing results of most therapeutic cancer vaccine trials, it has been questioned whether there is any potential role for such products going forward. In my opinion the answer is “yes” based on the following: [1] there is a persistent unmet clinical need because the majority of patients do not benefit from anti-checkpoint therapy, [2] there is evidence that not all patients make immune responses to their tumors, [3] there is evidence that immune responses to autologous tumor antigens can be induced by patient-specific vaccines, [4] there is clinical evidence from the pre-checkpoint era that suggests survival can be positively impacted by such patient-specific vaccines, and [5] the 2 available therapeutic vaccines that have received regulatory approval are quite limited in terms of their therapeutic benefit.

KEYWORDS:

• cancer stem cells
• dendritic cells
• tumor associated antigens
• patient-specific neoantigens
• therapeutic vaccines

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The author is employed by AiVita Biomedical, Inc.