Novel cancer vaccines

Abstract

The intellectual property literature concerning novel cancer vaccine strategies for the period of 1998 and 2000 is reviewed. Nearly 400 citations have been identified and the majority of the citations described herein involve the identification of new tumour associated antigens and novel strategies of cancer vaccine formulations. Significant progresses have been made during this period in the identification of new tumour associated antigens (TAAs), the refinement of gene and DNA vaccination techniques, the development of dendritic cell-based immunotherapy and the use of cytokines and CpG-containing oligodeoxynucleotides as vaccine adjuvants. In addition, encouraging results have been obtained from vaccination studies of animal tumour models and a large number of novel cancer vaccines are currently under development or at early stages of clinical evaluation. Although the availability of cancer vaccines for clinical use in patient management remains a challenge to the cancer research community, we can be cautiously optimistic that vaccination has the potential to become an important treatment option for cancer patients in the foreseeable future.

• adjuvant
• cancer
• immunisation
• immunotherapy
• tumour
• vaccine