Abstract
Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a heterogeneous group of squamous cell cancers that affect the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Worldwide, it is the sixth most common cancer but in parts of Southern and South-East Asia, HNC is one of the most common cancers. A significant proportion of HNC is driven by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, whereas HPV-independent HNC is associated with alcohol, smoking, and smokeless tobacco consumption. Here, we review the past and present experience of targeting HNC with vaccination focusing on HPV-derived antigens as well as non-viral antigens for HPV-negative HNC. Novel therapeutic approaches for HNC will focus not only on effective vaccine platforms but will also target the stroma-rich immunosuppressive microenvironment found in those tumours.
Highlights
Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a heterogeneous group of squamous cell cancers that affect the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx
For induction of longlasting CTLs, CD4 T helper (Th)1 cells must be co-induced [88]. These provide T-cell help via dendritic cells (DC)-licensing by binding to 12-15mer or longer peptides presented in the context of MHC II on DCs which leads to DC activation [89, 90]
Patients with advanced human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers were vaccinated weekly with a synthetic long peptides (SLPs) derived from p16 [27, 37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62], the tumour suppressor induced as a result of HPVlinked transformation, after the completion of a standard treatment
Summary
Cancer Sciences Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom. Reviewed by: Graham Robert Leggatt, The University of Queensland, Australia Angelika B. Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a heterogeneous group of squamous cell cancers that affect the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Worldwide, it is the sixth most common cancer but in parts of Southern and South-East Asia, HNC is one of the most common cancers. We review the past and present experience of targeting HNC with vaccination focusing on HPV-derived antigens as well as non-viral antigens for HPV-negative HNC. Novel therapeutic approaches for HNC will focus on effective vaccine platforms but will target the stroma-rich immunosuppressive microenvironment found in those tumours
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