Personalized and HPV cancer vaccines in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: from concept to clinical implementation - PubMed
4 hours ago
- #immunotherapy
- #HPV vaccines
- #HNSCC
- Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains challenging with limited survival improvements despite immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs).
- Personalized neoantigen vaccines and HPV-targeted therapeutic vaccines are emerging as innovative strategies to enhance antitumor immunity.
- Personalized vaccines use tumor-specific mutations to generate individualized T cell responses, showing safety and immunogenicity in early trials.
- HPV-targeted vaccines like PDS0101, BNT113, and CUE-101 are being explored in HPV-positive HNSCC, often combined with ICIs.
- Early clinical activity has been observed, but results should be interpreted cautiously due to small sample sizes and exploratory endpoints.
- Therapeutic vaccination is safe and immunologically active but efficacy is limited by the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.
- Vaccines may be most effective in earlier disease stages with lower tumor burden and more feasible immune modulation.
- Further research is needed to integrate vaccine-based therapies into multimodal HNSCC treatment paradigms.