Therapeutic vaccination for active induction of T cell immunity against cancer, ready for a rich harvest after 40 years - PubMed
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- #combination therapy
- #therapeutic vaccines
- #cancer immunotherapy
- Therapeutic vaccines for cancer include DNA, mRNA, protein-loaded antigen-presenting cells, synthetic long peptide (SLP), and recombinant virus platforms.
- Only two therapeutic vaccines for neoplastic diseases have been approved by the FDA in the past 40 years: sipuleucel-T (2010) for prostate cancer and zopapogene imadenovec (2025) for HPV-related recurrent respiratory papillomatosis.
- DNA, mRNA, and SLP vaccines targeting mutation-derived neoantigens have shown strong immunogenicity and clinical activity, sometimes combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
- Vaccine monotherapy is effective in premalignant disorders caused by HPV16 and virus-negative colonic polyps.
- For bulky or recurrent/metastatic disease, combination therapy with surgery, chemotherapy, or immune checkpoint inhibitors (e.g., PD-1 blockers) is necessary.
- A recent study showed adjuvant neoantigen-specific mRNA vaccine plus PD-1 blocker reduced melanoma recurrence compared to PD-1 blocker alone.
- In HPV16+ head and neck cancer, combination therapy with SLP vaccine and PD-1 blocker benefited patients with high pretreatment PD-L1 biomarker expression.
- Biomarker-guided therapy is increasingly recommended for personalized treatment.