Tumour vaccines articles from across Nature Portfolio

Nucleic acid-based therapies offer an alternative to traditional cancer treatment modalities, with promising data beginning to emerge. In this Review, the authors describe the design and development of nucleic acid-based therapies administered virally and non-virally, including discussions of the advantages and disadvantage of each approach, as well as the role of patient-specific factors such as the tumour microenvironment, and consider the most promising future research directions.

Oncolytic measles virus (MV) vaccine strains have shown preclinical antitumor activity against glioblastoma (GBM). Here the authors report the results of a phase 1 trial of intratumoral administration of a MV strain engineered to express the carcinoembryonic antigen in patients with recurrent GBM including assessment of viral replication and proinflammatory remodeling of the treated tumors.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been actively explored for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Here, the authors report a universal metabolic tagging technology to generate chemically tagged EVs from parent cells, modulate EV-cell interactions, and develop potent EV-based cancer vaccines.

Whole autologous tumor cell vaccine (TCV) has been proposed as a tool for cancer immunotherapy. Here the authors describe the design of a TCV platform based on photothermal nanoparticle-loaded tumor cells, triggering NIR laser irradiation induced anti-tumor immune responses at the vaccination site.

Mota et al. show that poor response to immune checkpoint blockade in mouse models of ALK-rearranged NSCLC can be overcome by vaccination with an immunogenic ALK peptide and identify immunogenic human ALK peptides for future translational study.

GM-CSF-secreting whole-cell cancer vaccine (GVAX) promotes T-cell response against a range of tumor associated antigens in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDA). Here the authors report the results of the initial three treatment arms of a platform trial of neoadjuvant and adjuvant GVAX alone or in combination with PD-1 antagonist and CD137 agonist antibodies in patients with resectable PDA.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Dezhong Ji describes the development and use of a chimeric antigenic peptide influenza virus (CAP-Flu) system as a cancer vaccine strategy to promote tumour-infiltrating T cell activation in lung metastasis.

A preprint by Lozano-Rabella et al. uses a proteogenomics approach to identify an underappreciated class of non-canonical tumour ligands shared across tumours.

In a study in Nature, Wang et al. describe how circadian rhythms can impact tumour suppression through their effects on dendritic cells, a finding that could help to optimize clinical trials of cancer immunotherapies.

Cancer vaccines can elicit tumor-specific T cells, but sustaining their function via immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) may be required for robust anti-tumor immunity. A new study reveals that neoantigen cancer vaccines synergize with anti-PD-L1 ICT in a preclinical model and provides mechanistic insights into this synergy.

mRNA vaccines have proven safe and effective in preventing serious illness and death during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Comment, Morris and Kopetz argue that these technologies offer a novel approach towards personalizing immune-based treatments for patients with cancer with the potential for immune activation beyond commonly utilized immunotherapies.