EBN-The development of prophylactic and therapeutic anti-cancer vaccinations is currently a hot topic. Will the up coming stage signal the end of this cancerous illness that has long taken millions of lives worldwide?
Read the next article to find the scientific solution:
The vacctination are a type of immunotherapy. Cancer vaccines, according to the Research Institute, are a form of immunotherapy that helps educate the immune system about the appearance of cancer cells so it can recognize and eliminate them. Vaccines have proven effective in preventing many diseases, such as polio and smallpox, since their first appearance 200 years ago. However, in the case of disease, the situation is more complex due to the complex nature of the disease and its diverse types, making it more difficult to develop vaccines to prevent or treat it.
In contrast to bacteria and viruses, which our immune system perceives as alien, cancer cells closely mimic the body’s normal, healthy cells. Every tumor is different and has its own set of traits and antibodies. As a result, more sophisticated approaches are required to develop effective vacctination.
Disease prevention vaccines
Viral infections are responsible for the development of many types of cancer, and preventive vaccines play an important role in reducing the risk. For example, human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical and head and neck cancers, and hepatitis B virus (HBV) can cause liver it . Therefore, in recent years, several vaccines have been developed to protect against HBV and HPV infections, thereby preventing the development of HBV and HPV-associated cancers. The FDA has approved four of these disease-preventing vaccines.
Therapeutic vaccination
Since each individual’s cancerous tumor has unique characteristics and specific antigens, more advanced approaches to developing the vaccination are needed.
Doctors have identified targets in patients’ tumors that help distinguish disease cells from normal cells. Sometimes, these targets are natural proteins produced by cancer cells at abnormally high levels. Based on this, the Sipuleucel-T vaccine was developed and received FDA approval in 2010 for the treatment of patients with advanced prostate cancer . In addition, viral-derived proteins, expressed by virus-infected cancer cells, represent another promising source of markers that could be targeted by vaccines.
The tuberculosis vaccine (BCG) acts as a general immune stimulator and, in 1990, became the first immunotherapy of any kind approved by the FDA. It is still used to treat early-stage bladder cancer.
Personalized cancer vaccines
Unlike naturally overexpressed proteins, such as PAP proteins, tumors also display unique targets that arise as a result of mutations. These targets, called “neoantigens,” are expressed exclusively by cancer cells and not by the patient’s healthy cells. Therefore, it may be possible to use “new antigen” vaccines to precisely direct immune responses against patients’ tumor cells while sparing healthy cells from immune attack, potentially preventing side effects.
In addition to the vaccines mentioned above, several new antigen vaccines are currently being evaluated in clinical trials at several research centers worldwide, either alone or in combination with other treatments, in a variety of cancer types.
Successful trial of a vacctination
In February 2025, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported that all nine patients participating in a clinical trial who were treated for stage III or IV clear cell renal cell carcinoma (a form of kidney cancer) demonstrated a successful anti-cancer immune response after receiving a cancer vaccine.
These vaccines, given after surgery to remove the tumor, are designed to train the body’s immune system to recognize and eliminate any remaining cancer cells. At the end of the remission period (an average of 34.7 months), all patients remained disease-free.
