Cancers, Vol. 12, Pages 1121: Opportunities for Conventional and in Situ Cancer Vaccine Strategies and Combination with Immunotherapy for Gastrointestinal Cancers, A Review

Cancers, Vol. 12, Pages 1121: Opportunities for Conventional and in Situ Cancer Vaccine Strategies and Combination with Immunotherapy for Gastrointestinal Cancers, A Review Cancers doi: 10.3390/cancers12051121 Authors: Rachid Bouzid Maikel Peppelenbosch Sonja I. Buschow Survival of gastrointestinal cancer remains dismal, especially for metastasized disease. For various cancers, especially melanoma and lung cancer, immunotherapy has been proven to confer survival benefits, but results for gastrointestinal cancer have been disappointing. Hence, there is substantial interest in exploring the usefulness of adaptive immune system education with respect to anti-cancer responses though vaccination. Encouragingly, even fairly non-specific approaches to vaccination and immune system stimulation, involving for instance influenza vaccines, have shown promising results, eliciting hopes that selection of specific antigens for vaccination may prove useful for at least a subset of gastrointestinal cancers. It is widely recognized that immune recognition and initiation of responses are hampered by a lack of T cell help, or by suppressive cancer-associated factors. In this review we will discuss the hurdles that limit efficacy of conventional cancer therapeutic vaccination methods (e.g., peptide vaccines, dendritic cell vaccination). In addition, we will outline other forms of treatment (e.g., radiotherapy, chemotherapy, oncolytic viruses) that also cause the release of antigens t...
Source: Cancers - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Review Source Type: research