Melanoma vaccines: developments over the past 10 years

Abstract

Decades of preclinical evaluation and clinical trials into melanoma vaccines have yielded spectacular progress in our understanding of melanoma antigens and the immune mechanisms of tumor rejection. Key insights and the results of their clinical evaluation are reviewed in this article. Unfortunately, durable clinical benefit following vaccination remains uncommon. Two recent clinical advances that will impact on melanoma vaccine development are trials with inhibitors of CTLA-4 and oncogenic BRAF. Long-term therapeutic control of melanoma will require integration of specific active immunotherapy with these emerging successful therapies from the disparate fields of immune regulation and signal transduction.

Keywords::

• adjuvants
• dendritic cells
• immune checkpoint inhibition
• immune monitoring
• immunotherapy
• kinase inhibitors
• melanoma
• tumor antigens
• vaccine

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors acknowledge support from National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia, Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA), the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC), New York, the Victorian Cancer Agency (VCA) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, as well as Operational Infrastructure Support Program Funding of the Victorian Government and NHMRC Independent Research Institutes Infrastructure Support Scheme. Jonathan Cebon, Ian D Davis and Weisan Chen hold a patent in relation to an NY-ESO-1 vaccine. Jonathan Cebon has received research support from GlaxoSmithKline, which has licensed cancer testis antigens from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. The authors have no other 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 apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.