Recent developments in cancer vaccines

The adoptive transfer of cancer Ag-specific effector T cells in patients can result in tumor rejection, thereby illustrating the immune system potential for cancer therapy. Ideally, one would like to directly induce efficient tumor-specific effector and memory T cells through vaccination. Therapeutic vaccines have two objectives: priming Ag-specific T cells and reprogram-ming memory T cells (i.e., a transformation from one type of immunity to another, for example, regulatory to cytotoxic). Recent successful phase III clinical trials showing benefit to the patients revived cancer vaccines. Dendritic cells (DCs) are essential in generation of im-mune responses, and as such represent targets and vec-tors for vaccination. We have learned that different DC subsets elicit different T cells. Similarly, different acti-vation methods result in DCs able to elicit distinct T cells. We contend that a careful manipulation of ac-tivated DCs will allow cancer immunotherapists to produce the next generation of highly efficient cance