Vaccination strategies and adoptive immunotherapy for ovarian cancer. Literature review

Abstract

The review considers modern cancer vaccines consisting of autologous whole cells, dendritic cells loaded with autologous tumor-specific antigens, or plasmids, which lead to antigen expression and immune activation after repeated exposure. Each vaccination strategy can be supplemented with various immunomodulatory agents. Engineering autologous immunotherapy of tumor cells is an approach to restoring the effector function of T cells. Other tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) are also of interest in ovarian can cer. Adoptive immunotherapy is based on infusion of autologous or allogeneic tumor-targeted immune cells that have been expanded and/or activated exvivo. Adoptive immunotherapy can be based on antigen-dependent (innate immunity, for example, natural killer (NK) and cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells) or antigen-independent (adaptive immunity, for instance, TILs, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells) strategies. NK cells can kill tumor cells without prior sensitization and play an important role in tumor immunosuppression. Adoptive T-cell immunotherapy, CAR-T-cell immunotherapy, allows combining antigen specificity through conjugation of a specific antibody with T-cell activating properties in a single fused molecule. CARs bypass the immune mechanism of cancer cell release as they endow T-lymphocytes with cytotoxic effector properties. In order to reduce mortality and improve prognosis, further study and refinement of immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of ovarian cancer is required.