Novel strategies for improved cancer vaccines

Therapeutic vaccination against cancer is an important modality complementing current standard therapies and may lead to long-term control of cancer. Numerous strategies are in development in an attempt to achieve better effectiveness but, except for the recent advent of vaccines against human papillomavirus, the long effort to produce a cancer vaccine has not succeeded. Nevertheless, a number of novel approaches can be pursued that, in our view, include optimized antigen design, in vivo-targeted dendritic cell vaccination and cancer vaccines used in combination with chemotherapy, monoclonal antibodies, adoptive T-cell transfer or stem cell transplantation. This article summarizes the rationale and development of these approaches for improved cancer vaccines.