Obstacles in the Development of Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines Publisher



Keshavarzfathi M^{1, 2, 3} ; Rezaei N^{3, 4, 5}
Source: Vaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: An Evidence-Based Review on Current Status and Future Perspectives Published:2018

Abstract

Much effort has been dedicated to developing therapeutic cancer vaccines for some decades since the years that identification of various tumor antigens received great attention. Vaccines showed some positive results in early clinical trials, which made them a promising modality for cancer treatment. However, some negative reports restricted new trials from being conducted to address the efficacy of vaccines, optimization of vaccine dose(s), and combination therapy. At different levels of developing a vaccine, from identifying and validating tumor antigens for specific immunotherapy toward assessing them in clinical trials, some issues should be taken into consideration to overcome the obstacles. In this chapter, we review barriers in exploiting cancer vaccines as an effective treatment. Concerns regarding tumor antigens, the selection of the candidate population, setting the end points for clinical trials, and surrogate end points will be discussed in this chapter. © 2019 Nima Rezaei and Mahsa Keshavarz-Fathi Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.