Therapeutic vaccines

Abstract

The science and medical usage of vaccination are undergoing revolutionary changes both in terms of disease scope and enabling technologies. The traditional usage of vaccines to prevent infectious disease is still growing, but the faster growth rate is in vaccine R&D for cancer and chronic disease indications. The latter category of vaccines has been designated as 'Therapeutic Vaccines'. However, this is loose usage of terminology, and the new generation of vaccines will be used for treatment of both infectious and non-infectious diseases, in addition to the more traditional preventative usage of vaccines for the latter.Moreover, the emerging platform technologies, which encompass peptide-conjugate, nucleic acid and virus vector based vaccines, are shared by the broad range of disease applications. Hence the terms infectious disease vaccines (IDVs) and non-infectious disease vaccines (NIDVs), may be more suitable than 'therapeutic' and 'prophylactic'. Cancer vaccines are currently the dominant category of NIDVs and encouraging results are emerging from clinical trials, with the first product registrations expected by the year 2000. The lead products utilise the tumour 'marker' strategy for immunisation, but antihormone and antigrowth factor vaccines are also under development. Expansion into chronic disease treatment has already occurred, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and hypertension/heart failure targets. The true potential of these novel vaccines will be established by clinical trial results over the next few years.