Personalized cancer vaccines

Importance of the field: Personalized medicine has extended to management of cancer and implies prescription of specific therapeutics best suited for an individual patient and the type of tumor. These principles have been applied to cancer vaccines. Areas covered in this review: Various cancer vaccines that can be personalized. Tumor-derived vaccines have been used and active immunotherapy based on antigens specific to the tumor. Dendritic cells (DCs) can prime tumor-specific T cell responses and are considered potentially effective vaccines for cancer. DCs may be genetically modified or fused with tumor cells. Adoptive cell therapy is based on autologous antigen-specific T lymphocytes. Personalized peptide vaccination has been combined with chemotherapy. Clinical trials have been conducted. There have been many failures but a selection of those currently in progress is presented. What the reader will gain: An overview of various types of personalized cancer vaccines, their mechanism of action and current status of development. Causes of failure of clinical trials and concepts of an ideal personalized cancer vaccine are presented. Take home message: A number of approaches are available for personalized cancer vaccines with variable degree of success. There are several challenges and needs for refinement of methods but it remains a promising area of cancer therapy.