Therapeutic tumour vaccines: A review

As the time progressed immunotherapy has become one of the best modalities of cancer treatment, along with chemotherapy and radiation; under which comes the promising field of “therapeutic tumour vaccines”. The therapeutic cancer vaccines theoretically have the potential to stimulate specific immunity against tumours while sparing normal tissues, leading not only to tumour lysis but also to the induction of a long lasting, systemic immunological memory that protects against recurrent disease and metastasis. Although the challenge of developing an effective cancer vaccine remains, several therapeutic vaccination strategies are being evaluated in clinical trials. Based on their content, the cancer vaccines may be classified into several major categories, which include cell (tumour or immune cell) vaccines, protein/peptide vaccines and genetic (DNA, RNA, and viral) vaccines. The overwhelmingly immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment that reduces the clinical efficacy of vaccines can now be modified by different approaches.