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Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology

Editor-in-Chief

ISSN (Print): 1389-2010
ISSN (Online): 1873-4316

Recent Advances in Active Specific Cancer Vaccine Treatment for Colorectal Cancer

Author(s): Kiyotaka Okuno, Fumiaki Sugiura, Kyogo Itoh, Koji Yoshida, Takuya Tsunoda and Yusuke Nakamura

Volume 13, Issue 8, 2012

Page: [1439 - 1445] Pages: 7

DOI: 10.2174/138920112800784998

Price: $65

Abstract

Cloning techniques to identify genes and peptides of tumor-associated antigens have created new possibilities for the immunotherapy of patients with advanced cancer. Here, we review recent clinical trials of specific cancer vaccines, mainly HLA-restricted peptides, and epitope-encoding vectors for advanced colorectal cancer (CRC). Many researchers initially focused on carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) as an immunologic target antigen that is overexpressed on virtually all CRCs. A recombinant vaccine containing the CEA gene and dendritic cells (DCs) loaded with CEA peptide was administered to patients with CEA-elevated CRC. Although CEA-specific responses were detected, the clinical responses were limited. Recently, new types of clinical trials—namely, a personalized protocol to take into account the immunological diversity of cytotoxic T cell responses among patients and a novel cancer-testis antigen protocol that uses multiple peptides derived from genes identified by the cDNA array method—have been introduced. The personalized protocol seemed to be better than the classical (non-personalized) protocol in terms of clinical response and survival. Novel cancertestis antigen protocols that use multiple CRC-derived peptides were recently conducted in patients with advanced CRC. The preliminary study yielded promising results regarding specific T cell responses to peptides and survival benefits. In this review, we summarize these results and discuss future perspectives.

Keywords: Active specific cancer vaccine, cancer-specific peptide vaccine, colorectal cancer (CRC), personalized peptide vaccine, tumor-associated antigens, immunotherapy, "cancer vaccines", colorectal cancer, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), immunologic target antigen, clinical trials, cytotoxic, cancer-testis, "multiple peptides"


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