A vaccine for leukemia: one step closer? Cure-oriented WT1 peptide vaccination therapy is being developed

Leukemia antigen-targeting vaccination therapy is a naturally occurring demand & its establishment is now desired For the treatment of hematological malignancies, including leukemia, striking advances in chemotherapy, targeted therapy such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), have been made. However, unfortunately, a substantial proportion of patients relapse after treatment. In this context, a novel treatment is desired and one of the more attractive candidates is a vaccine therapy. HSCT is the most intensive treatment for leukemia. The HSCT confers a powerful T-cell-mediated graft-versus-leukemia effect to eradicate leukemic cells and, therefore, is a direct evidence for the effectiveness of T-cell-mediated immune reaction in leukemia treatment. The undisputed effect of graft-versus-leukemia provided us with an idea that autologous T lymphocytes, as well as HSCT donor-derived T cells, might eradicate leukemic cells if the autologous T cells could recognize leukemia antigens and be activated strongly enough.