New Hope for Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines in the Era of Immune Checkpoint Modulation

Abstract

The driver and passenger mutations accumulated in the process of malignant transformation offer an adequate spectrum of immune visible alterations to the cellular proteome and resulting peptidome to render these cancers targetable—and, in theory, rejectable—by the host T cell immune response. In addition, cancers often overexpress tissue-specific and developmental antigens to which immune tolerance is incomplete. Sometimes, virally transferred oncogenes drive malignant transformation and remain expressed throughout the cancer. Despite this state of antigenic sufficiency, cancer grows progressively and overcomes all efforts of the host immune system to contain it. While therapeutic cancer vaccination can mobilize high frequencies of tumor-specific T cells, these responses remain subject to intratumoral attenuation. Antibody modulation of T cell function through checkpoint blockade or costimulatory activation can restore survival, proliferation, and effector function to these tumor-infiltrating T cells and convert otherwise subtherapeutic vaccines into potentially curative cancer immunotherapeutics.