Clinical Landscape of Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

ObjectiveTo explore the status and characteristics of clinical trials of therapeutic cancer vaccines, and provide the overall trend of clinical translational research of therapeutic cancer vaccines.MethodsThe ClinicalTrial registration platform was employed to retrieve relevant clinical trial information of therapeutic cancer vaccines from 2002 to 2023. The current clinical landscape of therapeutic cancer vaccines was analyzed from the perspectives of the number of registrations, types of vaccines, trial design, and geographical distribution.ResultsA total of 1563 clinical trials for therapeutic cancer vaccines were obtained from 2002 to 2023, with an average annual registration of approximately 70 trials. Among these, phase Ⅰ trials accounted for 976 (62.4%, 976/1563), phase Ⅱ trials for 474 (30.3%, 474/1563), phase Ⅲ trials for 68 (4.4%, 68/1563), and other types for 45 (2.9%, 45/1563). Clinical trials from phase Ⅰ to phase Ⅲ were conducted in multiple regions worldwide, with multicenter clinical trials totaling 482 (31.8%) and single-center clinical trials totaling 1036 (68.2%). The main types of vaccines were cell vector vaccines (38.7%, 588/1518) and protein/peptide vaccines (34.1%, 518/1518), with the primary research designs being single-arm studies (55.3%, 840/1518) and randomized controlled trials (27.8%, 422/1518). The top five indications for the vaccines were melanoma (16.5%, 251/1518), glioblastoma (8.9%, 135/1518), breast cancer (8.6%, 130/1518), prostate cancer (8.5%, 129/1518), and lung cancer (8.1%, 123/1518).ConclusionsThe overall development of clinical trials for therapeutic cancer vaccines has been stable and primarily focused on exploratory trials. The main types of vaccines were cell vector vaccines, and the main research designs were single-arm studies and randomized controlled trials. The vaccines were commonly indicated for melanoma, glioblastoma, and breast cancer. Currently, there are significant challenges in the clinical translation in this field, which may be due to the complexity of the immune microenvironment, patient heterogeneity, and the challenges in vaccine design and preparation. With the application of high-throughput technologies such as proteomics, genomic sequencing, and bioinformatics, it is expected that barriers in the research of therapeutic cancer vaccines would be overcome, thus leading to a better clinical translation landscape.

Keywords

• tumor immunotherapy
• vaccines
• clinical trials
• research status