Checkpoint Inhibitors Boost Cancer Vaccine Research

Source: Cancer Therapy Advisor, February 2019

The striking success of checkpoint inhibition in the treatment of certain cancers has reinvigorated cancer research into therapeutic vaccines. Although, historically, lone vaccine treatments for cancer hold a modest track record, combining them with checkpoint inhibitors, which override a tumor’s ability to escape detection, may turn “hot cancers even hotter,” said James Gulley, MD, PhD, chief of the genitourinary malignancies branch at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Also, he said, combining these therapies may turn “cold” tumors hot, enabling the immune system to better recognize cancer cells as foreign and unleash a vigorous attack.

By definition, hot tumors contain abundant cancer-fighting T cells, many of which (but not all) respond to immunotherapy. Melanoma is widely considered a prototype hot tumor, because as these cancers progress, they develop numerous DNA mutations that produce distinctive tumor-specific molecules called neoantigens. Many of these tumor-exclusive antigens now form the backbone of personalized vaccines for individual patients.¹