Cancer-Testis Antigen Peptide Vaccine for Cancer Immunotherapy: Progress and Prospects

Abstract

Cancer vaccines, including peptide-based vaccines, have been considered a key tool of effective and protective cancer immunotherapy because of their capacity to provide long-term clinical benefit for tumors. Among a large number of explorations of peptide antigen-based vaccines, cancer-testis antigens (CTAs), which are activated in cancers but silenced in normal tissues (except testis tissue), are considered as ideal targets. Currently, personalized treatment for cancer has become a trend due to its superior clinical efficacy. Thus, we envisage rational selection of CTA peptides to design "personalized" CTA peptide vaccines. This review summarizes the advances in CTA peptide vaccine research and discusses the feasibility of establishing "personalized" CTA peptide vaccines.

Fig. 1

Workflow for targeted peptide selection and vaccine manufacture. Certain CTAs have been discovered in tumor tissues through immunohistochemical and HLA typing and determined by serotyping techniques. Thus, personal CTA HLA-binding peptides can be selected as target peptides for vaccine design. Candidate peptides are selected for incorporation into the personalized peptide vaccine, which is administered to patients in combination with an immune adjuvant to trigger an immune response to attack tumor cells.