Personalized Dendritic Cell Vaccines—Recent Breakthroughs and Encouraging Clinical Results

Abstract

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With the advent of combined immunotherapies, personalized dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccination could integrate the current standard of care for the treatment of a large variety of tumors. Due to their proficiency at antigen presentation, DC are key coordinators of the innate and adaptive immune system, and have critical roles in the induction of antitumor immunity. However, despite proven immunogenicity and favorable safety profiles, DC-based immunotherapies have not succeeded at inducing significant objective clinical responses. Emerging data suggest that the combination of DC-based vaccination with other cancer therapies may fully unleash the potential of DC-based cancer vaccines and improve patient survival. In this review, we discuss the recent efforts to develop innovative personalized DC-based vaccines and their use in combined therapies, with a particular focus on ovarian cancer and the promising results of mutanome-based personalized immunotherapies.

Keywords

• dendritic cells
• vaccines
• cancer
• immunotherapy
• neo-antigens