Cancer vaccines as a therapeutic modality: the long trek

A. G. Dalgleish1 and M. A. Whelan2

(1) Department of Oncology, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, SW17 0RE London, UK
(2) Onyvax Ltd, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, SW17 0RE London, UK

Received: 11 November 2005 Accepted: 29 December 2005 Published online: 28 February 2006

Abstract The development of cancer vaccines has been one of the several false dawns in which initial promising Phase I and Phase II clinical data have not been followed up with conclusive Phase III trials. In this review, we describe some of the successes and failures, and review the most likely reasons for Phase III failure, such as protocol changes, which are common between Phase II and III, and poorly defined patient groups. Nevertheless, significant survival results have been reported with autologous vaccines for colorectal, renal and, more recently, prostate cancer. In addition, it is becoming evident that immunotherapy is potentially synergistic with other treatment modalities, such as chemotherapy, which can reduce T-regulatory activity that inhibits the immune response to cancer vaccines. This potential for synergy should allow cancer vaccines to become part of the standard treatment regimen for many common tumours.
Keywords Immunotherapy - Clinical trial - Cancer vaccines

This article is a symposium paper from the “Robert Baldwin Symposium: 50 years of Cancer Immunotherapy”, held in Nottingham, Great Britain, on 30 June 2005.