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The secret of personalized cancer vaccines: Why they could be a new hope for cancer treatment?
As cancer cases continue to rise, scientists continue to explore innovative treatments, and it is against this background that cancer vaccines are gradually emerging. Cancer vaccines, or tumor vaccines, not only treat existing cancers but also have the potential to prevent the development of cancers. In recent years, personalized cancer vaccines have gradually become a focus of research. They are designed based on the patient's own tumor characteristics, with the purpose of improving the immune system's ability to recognize and attack cancer cells.
The development of cancer vaccines is not limited to treatment, they also have the potential to prevent, especially in individuals with appropriate risk factors.
Traditional cancer treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, while vaccines provide a novel treatment option. The main working mechanism of cancer vaccines is to activate the patient's immune system by presenting tumor-specific antigens, which are mainly derived from cancer cells. According to research, tumor antigens are often unique to a patient's tumor, so these vaccines can help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells without affecting healthy cells.
Cancer antigens can be divided into shared tumor antigens and unique tumor antigens. Shared antigens are expressed in a variety of tumors, while unique antigens are caused by specific mutations and are expressed only in individual tumors.
There are various types of cancer vaccines, including cell-based, protein or peptide-based, and gene-based vaccines. Among them, cell-based vaccines may be derived from the patient's own tumor cells, which means they provide the broadest range of relevant antigens. However, this approach is costly and requires large amounts of cell samples, limiting its generalizability. To overcome this challenge, scientists have begun looking into using cancer cell lines that resemble patient tumors to create vaccines, but the results so far have been less than ideal. For example, the vaccine Canvaxin failed to achieve expected results in clinical trials.
Protein- or peptide-based vaccines often contain cancer-specific epitopes and may require adjuvants to stimulate an immune response. For example, some peptides targeting HER2, such as GP2 and NeuVax, have shown the potential to elicit immune responses. Since different patients have different major histocompatibility complex (MHC) phenotypes, it becomes critical to consider MHC types in vaccine development.
Gene-based vaccines are composed of nucleic acids (DNA/RNA) encoding specific genes, which are expressed in antigen-presenting cells. While how to effectively deliver such a vaccine is still being explored, results from preliminary studies have shown promise.
Combining vaccines with other immunotherapies may further improve the efficacy of vaccine therapies, especially with the aid of immune checkpoint inhibitors.
As more and more clinical trials are conducted, based on data on clinicaltrials.gov, there are There are more than 1,900 trials on cancer vaccines, 186 of which are phase 3 clinical trials. These trials cover various types of cancer, such as breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, etc. In addition, certain vaccines, such as sipuleucel-T, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer.
Although the safety of cancer vaccines has been verified by multiple studies, their efficacy still needs to be further improved. Researchers believe that early vaccination may greatly improve the effectiveness of treatment, especially in the early stages of cancer. Clinical trials must be carefully designed to ensure that the benefits of their therapies can be effectively assessed.
The future of cancer vaccines is full of hope, but how to improve their efficacy and maximize patient benefit remains a challenge.
In short, personalized cancer vaccines are gradually becoming the cutting-edge technology of cancer research. Although they still face various challenges in clinical trials, their potential cannot be underestimated. As our understanding of oncology deepens and immunotherapy advances, perhaps in the near future, cancer vaccines will truly become an effective weapon against this global health challenge. Can we look forward to a future where we are no longer afraid of cancer?
