Cancer vaccines can be cell-based, protein- or peptide-based, or gene-based (DNA/RNA). Cell-based vaccines include<unk>  cells or<unk>  cell lysates.<unk>  cells from the patient are predicted to contain the greatest spectrum of relevant<unk> s, but this approach is expensive and often requires too many<unk>  cells from the patient to be effective. Using a combination of established cancer cell lines that resemble the patient’s<unk>  can overcome these barriers, but this approach has yet to be effective. Canvaxin, which incorporates three melanoma cell lines, failed phase III clinical trials. Another cell-based vaccine strategy involves autologous dendritic cells (dendritic cells derived from the patient) to which<unk><unk> s are added. In this strategy, the<unk> -presenting dendritic cells directly stimulate T-cells rather than relying on processing of the<unk> s by native APCs after the vaccine is delivered. The best known dendritic cell vaccine is Sipuleucel-T (Provenge), which only improved survival by four months. The efficacy of dendritic cell vaccines may be limited due to difficulty in getting the cells to migrate to lymph nodes and interact with T-cells. Peptide-based vaccines usually consist of cancer specific-epitopes and often require an adjuvant (for example, GM-CSF) to stimulate the immune system and enhance<unk> icity. Examples of these epitopes include Her2 peptides, such as GP2 and NeuVax. However, this approach requires MHC profiling of the patient because of MHC restriction. The need for MHC profile selection can be overcome by using longer peptides (“synthetic long peptides”) or purified protein, which are then processed into epitopes by APCs. Gene-based vaccines are composed of the nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) encoding for the gene. The gene is then expressed in APCs and the resulting protein product is processed into epitopes. Delivery of the gene is particularly challenging for this type of vaccine.
Tumor antigen vaccine
Dendritic cell-based cancer vaccine
Cancer vaccine
Antigen-presenting cell vaccine
Therapeutic vaccines
T-cell vaccination
Cancer immunotherapy
Vaccine therapy