Poorly biodegradable, incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA)-based anticancer vaccines primed CD8+ T cells that did not localize to the tumor site but to the persisting, antigen-rich vaccination site, which became a T-cell graveyard. Short-lived, water-based formulations and the provision of immunostimulatory molecules overcame this issue, resulting in tumor suppression. Here, we discuss the implic...

Abstract Autologous dendritic cell (DC) vaccines with tumor antigens have been used clinically limited therapeutic effects. Semi-allogeneic DC-based immunotherapy is still controversial, but it can be an alternative source and more attractive than autologous DC because the “off-the-shelf” DCs for multiple patients without lengthy individual manufacturing time may provide additional “allogeneic ...

The use of peptide-based vaccines as therapeutics aims to elicit immune responses through antigenic epitopes derived from tumor antigens. Peptide-based vaccines are easily synthesized and chemically stable entities, and of note, they are absent of oncogenic potential. However, their application is more complicated as the success of an effective peptide-based vaccine is determined by numerous pa...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary brain tumor, and despite aggressive therapy with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, average survival remains at about 1.5 years. The highly infiltrative and invasive nature of GBM requires that alternative treatments for this disease be widespread and targeted to tumor cells. Immunotherapy in the form of tumor vaccines has the potential to meet t...

Multiple observations in preclinical and clinical studies support a role for the immune system in controlling tumor growth and progression. Various components of the innate and adaptive immune response are able to mediate tumor cell destruction; however, certain immune cell populations can also induce a protumor environment that favors tumor growth and the development of metastasis. Moreover, t...

Malignant cells express antigens that can be harnessed to elicit anticancer immune responses. One approach to achieve such goal consists in the administration of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) or peptides thereof as recombinant proteins in the presence of adequate adjuvants. Throughout the past decade, peptide vaccines have been shown to mediate antineoplastic effects in various murine tumor ...

Cancer vaccines that use tumor lysate (TL) as a source of tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) have significant potential for generating therapeutic anti-tumor immune responses. Vaccines encompassing TL bypass the limitations of single antigen vaccines by simultaneously stimulating immunity against multiple TAAs, thereby broadening the repertoire of TAA-specific T-cell clones available for activati...

Killed herpesvirus cancer vaccines were prepared by inactivation of oncogenic herpesviruses (Herpesvirus saimiri and Herpesvirus ateles) with heat and formaldehyde. The killed vaccines, which are not free of viral nucleic acid, were safe in 121 vaccinated monkeys of 4 different species. Some of these monkeys have now been under observation for 2 years. The vaccines induced high titers of specif...

PURPOSE Tumor-reactive T cells were measured in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) because vaccines that increase the activity of these cells might lead to better disease control. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Proliferation and ELISPOT assays (for T cells producing IFN-gamma after stimulation by CD40-activated CLL cells) were used to determine the prevalence of tumor-reactive T cells in 2...