Personalized Cancer Vaccines: Challenges in Trials with Thousands of T Cells and Immune Antimicrobial Agents (T-Cell V vaccines)

The need to identify a cancer’s antigens is not an important aspect of other approaches. Ex vivo cell vaccines introduce tumour samples to dendritic cells (a type of immune cell) in culture. The T cells take up different types of neoantigens from the tumours. Then the activated dendritic cells are delivered into an individual.

Initial efforts closely resembled conventional vaccines for infectious diseases, delivering one or a few proteins that are commonly expressed by certain cancers. Such vaccines are still in development, but the failure of several shared-antigen vaccines in large clinical trials in the mid-2010s has shifted researchers’ attention towards more-personalized approaches.

Pancreatic cancer is a form of cancer. Half of the participants in a trial developed T cells to fight cancer. Recurrence-free survival in this group was longer compared with those who did not respond.

tHe disease: Lymphoma In the trial 8 of 11 people who received the vaccine showed tumours regression, as a result of combining radiotherapy and signalling molecule that mobilize and activated dendritic cells.

Unwieldy trials. Testing multiple combinations of agents makes clinical trials more complex. Another complicating factor is timing when to give a vaccine relative to other interventions, such as surgery.

Immunity monitoring is done. Tracking acquired immunity is important to assess vaccine efficacy. New T-cell monitoring techniques are needed for vaccines for cancer.

Scalability. Personalized cancer vaccines could pose logistical challenges. Streamlining production will be essential to keep costs down and availability high.