Cancer vaccine

A cancer vaccine is a vaccine that either treats existing cancer or prevents development of a cancer. Vaccines that treat existing cancer are known as therapeutic cancer vaccines.

Some/many of the vaccines are "autologous", being prepared from samples taken from the patient, and are specific to that patient.

Some researchers claim that cancerous cells routinely arise and are destroyed by the immune system; and that tumors form when the immune system fails to destroy them.

Some types of cancer, such as cervical cancer and some , are caused by viruses (oncoviruses). Traditional vaccines against those viruses, such as HPV vaccine and hepatitis B vaccine, prevent those types of cancer. These vaccines are not further discussed in this article. Other cancers are to some extent caused by bacterial infections (e.g. stomach cancer and Helicobacter pylori). Traditional vaccines against cancer-causing bacteria (oncobacteria) are not further discussed in this article.

One approach to cancer vaccination is to separate proteins from cancer cells and immunize patients against those proteins as antigens, in the hope of stimulating the immune system to kill the cancer cells. Research on cancer vaccines is underway for treatment of breast, lung, colon, skin, kidney, prostate and other cancers.

Another approach is to generate an immune response in situ in the patient using oncolytic viruses. This approach was used in the drug talimogene laherparepvec, a version of herpes simplex virus engineered to selectively replicate in tumor tissue and to express the immune stimulatory protein GM-CSF. This enhances the anti-tumor immune response to tumor antigens released following viral lysis and provides a patient-specific vaccine.

In a phase III trial of follicular lymphoma (a type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma), investigators reported that the BiovaxID (on average) prolonged remission by 44.2 months, versus 30.6 months for the control.

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