Clinical development of MVA-based therapeutic cancer vaccines

Abstract

Tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have been formulated into vaccines that, combined with adjuvants, cytokines or other strategies to boost the immune response, are now in clinical development. Both humoral and cellular immune responses to TAAs have been generated using these vaccines. This approach relies on the patient’s own immune system generating an effective anti-tumor immune response. The advantage of this over therapy with monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer is that multiple antigenic epitopes can be involved and the immune system is able to adapt to the most effective antigenic specificity for tumor growth control and rejection. In this article, we describe the clinical use of vaccinia virus, in particular modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA), to express TAAs in vivo and to stimulate an effective immune response to the cancer antigens.

Keywords::

• cancer immunotherapy
• modified vaccinia virus Ankara
• poxvirus vaccine
• therapeutic viral vaccine

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Both Jean-Yves Bonnefoy and Bruce Acres are fully employed by Transgene SA. 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.