Abstract
Therapeutic cancer vaccines constitute a valuable tool to educate the immune system to fight tumors and prevent cancer relapse. Nevertheless, the number of cancer vaccines in the clinic remains very limited to date, highlighting the need for further technology development. Recently, cancer vaccines have been improved by the use of materials, which can strongly enhance their intrinsic properties and biodistribution profile. Moreover, vaccine efficacy and safety can be substantially modulated through selection of the site at which they are delivered, which fosters the engineering of materials capable of targeting cancer vaccines to specific relevant sites, such as within the tumor or within lymphoid organs, to further optimize their immunotherapeutic effects. In this review, we aim to give the reader an overview of principles and current strategies to engineer therapeutic cancer vaccines, with a particular focus on the use of site-specific targeting materials. We will first recall the goal of therapeutic cancer vaccination and the type of immune responses sought upon vaccination, before detailing key components of cancer vaccines. We will then present how materials can be engineered to enhance the vaccine’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Finally, we will discuss the rationale for site-specific targeting of cancer vaccines and provide examples of current targeting technologies.
Highlights
Cancer ranks as the second leading cause of global deaths, according to the World Health Organization, with nearly 15% of people dying from it (World Health Organization, 2018)
We focus on strategies targeting dendritic cells (DCs), T cells, B cells, and natural killer (NK) cells as being the most studied targeted cell types for cancer vaccines
Cancer vaccines hold the promises of eradicating tumors and preventing relapse by inducing strong antigenspecific immune responses and long-term memory
Summary
Therapeutic cancer vaccines constitute a valuable tool to educate the immune system to fight tumors and prevent cancer relapse. Cancer vaccines have been improved by the use of materials, which can strongly enhance their intrinsic properties and biodistribution profile. Vaccine efficacy and safety can be substantially modulated through selection of the site at which they are delivered, which fosters the engineering of materials capable of targeting cancer vaccines to specific relevant sites, such as within the tumor or within lymphoid organs, to further optimize their immunotherapeutic effects. We aim to give the reader an overview of principles and current strategies to engineer therapeutic cancer vaccines, with a particular focus on the use of sitespecific targeting materials. We will discuss the rationale for site-specific targeting of cancer vaccines and provide examples of current targeting technologies
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