Vaccination and personalized cancer vaccines focusing on common cancers in women: A narrative review

Abstract

Immunotherapy has recently cast great attention on cancer vaccines in order to aim to decrease tumor growth, elicit persistent anti-tumor memory, and avert adverse reactions. Moreover, cancer vaccines employ tumor antigens to stimulate anti-tumor immunity using different platforms, for example, whole cells, nucleic acids, peptides, etc. Recent findings have classified cancer vaccines into cell-based, virus-based, peptide-based, and nucleic acid-based types. Personalized cancer vaccines, also known as neoantigens, have exhibited acceptable safety and efficacy in eliciting immune responses against melanoma and glioblastoma. Neoantigen-based vaccines, concentrating on tumor antigens present only in cancer cells, bring intriguing opportunities for different types of cancer, including melanoma, lung, bladder, breast, renal, head and neck, and colorectal cancers. Furthermore, breast cancer research underscores ongoing trials of vaccines targeting α-lactalbumin to prevent the recurrence of triple-negative breast cancer. Lung cancer studies have discovered interesting outcomes with liposomal vaccines and the potential of CIMAvax-EGF in the prevention of lung cancer. Studies on ovarian cancer highlight personalized cancer vaccines using dendritic cells and various tumor-associated antigens to elicit T-cell responses against cancer cells. Overall, such advancements suggest great promise for future clinical translation of cancer novel immunotherapy-based approaches to effectively counter various types of cancer.