Current concepts in cancer vaccine strategies

Cancer vaccines are entering a new: phase of popularity, in part because of the recognition of when a therapeutic vaccine is most effective and the indentification of appropriate target antigens. New technologies most notably gene transfection into dedritic cell and DNA vaccination approaches, have spurred further clinical evaluations. While many researchers consider humoral responses as not being viable for large tumors , these responses may play a role in regulating micrometastases (i.e., adjuvant setting. The recent approval of antibodies as therapeutics for cancer treatment has lent to the viability oft his therapy concept. The success of carbohydrate-conjugate vaccines in bacterial systems has also renewed interest in developing such vaccines for cancer- immunotherapy. Carbohydrates can be further converted into peptide/protein mimetics with several of these mimetics in clinical trials. These mimetic forms can be manipulated into DNA vaccine types that may be combined into DNA cassettes that contain CTL-associated epitopes to fill-ther define a novel strategy for future vaccine development.