Therapeutic Vaccines

"Therapeutic cancer vaccines activate a patient’s immune system to recognize and destroy cancer after it has developed, often by targeting unique markers found on cancer cells. These vaccines can complement existing therapies and may be especially effective when used in combination with ICIs, chemotherapy, or molecularly targeted therapies (1096)Zaidi N, et al. (2025) Nat Rev Cancer.(1097)Martini DJ, et al. (2025) Cancer Discov.. The only FDA-approved therapeutic cancer vaccine currently is sipuleucel-T (Provenge), which was approved in 2010 for treating advanced prostate cancer.\n\nOne therapeutic cancer vaccine strategy uses an RNA-based approach that can be tailored to encode multiple tumor-specific neoantigens—mutated proteins that are unique to cancer cells. In a recent clinical trial in patients with pancreatic cancer, an individualized RNA vaccine, given alongside the ICI atezolizumab and chemotherapy, triggered vaccine-specific T-cell responses in half of the patients, resulting in delayed cancer recurrence and favorable survival outcomes (1098)Sethna Z, et al. (2025) Nature, 639: 1042.."