Role of anti-idiotype vaccines in the modern treatment of human follicular lymphoma

Abstract

Cancer vaccines are currently conceived as therapeutic tools, in contrast to the prophylactic vaccines that have resolved the problem of a number of infectious diseases. Among the former, anti-idiotype vaccines for human follicular lymphoma have begun to produce tangible clinical results. Just 10 years ago it was not even known whether patients could be immunized against their own tumor antigens and now as many as two independent Phase III clinical trials based on this finding are underway. The rapidity of this development encourages the hope that active immunotherapy may soon become decisive in oncology. For the time being, many important results have already been achieved: the evidence of vaccine-induced, tumor-specific humoral/cellular responses and the first documented molecular remissions following vaccination.