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Artif Intell Cancer. Jun 28, 2021; 2(3): 25-41
Published online Jun 28, 2021. doi: 10.35713/aic.v2.i3.25
Therapeutic tumor vaccines — a rising star to benefit cancer patients
Qian Wei, Zhao-Yuan Fang, Zi-Meng Zhang, Teng-Fei Zhang
Qian Wei, Zi-Meng Zhang, Teng-Fei Zhang, Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, Henan Province, China
Zhao-Yuan Fang, Key Laboratory of Systems Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai 200031, China
Author contributions: Wei Q and Zhang ZM wrote the manuscript; Zhang TF and Fang ZY designed the outline and coordinated the writing of the paper; Wei Q made the figures and tables; All authors read, revised and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest related to this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Teng-Fei Zhang, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, No. 1 Eastern Jianshe Road, Zhengzhou 450052, Henan Province, China. fcczhangtf@zzu.edu.cn
Received: April 10, 2021
Peer-review started: April 10, 2021
First decision: April 28, 2021
Revised: May 11, 2021
Accepted: June 22, 2021
Article in press: June 22, 2021
Published online: June 28, 2021
Processing time: 79 Days and 8.7 Hours
Abstract

Malignant tumors are still a worldwide threat to human health. Tumor treatment strategies are constantly evolving, and the advent of tumor immunotherapy has brought up hope to many types of tumors, especially for those that are refractory to conventional therapies including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Tumor vaccines can initiate or amplify an anti-tumor immune response in tumor patients through active immunization, and therefore occupy an important position in tumor immunotherapy. The main types of tumor vaccines include tumor cell vaccines, dendritic cell vaccines, polypeptide vaccines and nucleic acid vaccines. Due to factors such as poor antigen selection and suppressive tumor microenvironment, earliest tumor vaccines on clinical trials failed to achieve satisfactory clinical effects. However, with the development of second-generation genome sequencing technologies and bioinformatics tools, it is possible to predict neoantigens generated by tumor-specific mutations and therefore prepare personalized vaccines. This article summarizes the global efforts in developing tumor vaccines and highlights several representative tumor vaccines in each category.

Keywords: Tumor vaccines; Tumor cell vaccines; Dendritic cell vaccines; Peptide vaccines; Nucleic acid vaccines

Core Tip: There are many advancements in the field of cancer immunotherapy in the past decade such as the application of immune checkpoint blockade and adoptive cell therapy. Tumor therapeutic vaccines have emerged as an additional effective treatment strategy due to their ability to trigger potent immune response. Typically, they are tumor cell vaccines, dendritic cell vaccines, peptide vaccines or nucleic acid vaccines. This article mainly reviews the current clinical status as well as research and development status of these four types of therapeutic tumor vaccines for those who are interested.