Altering Landscape of Cancer Vaccines: Unique Platforms, Research on Therapeutic Applications and Recent Patents

Recent developments in several areas are rekindling interest and empowering progress in improving therapeutic cancer vaccines. These advances have been made in target selection, vaccine technology, and approaches for reversing the immunosuppressive mechanisms exploited by cancers. Studies on diverse tumor antigens have revealed target properties, including high cell specificity and adequate immunogenicity, to affect clinical efficiency. Therefore, one of the principal goals of cancer vaccinology is the development of efficient therapeutic cancer vaccines that are capable of eliciting an effector as well as memory T cell response specific to tumor antigens. Neoantigens, which arise from mutated proteins in cancer cells, are cancer-specific and may be highly immunogenic. However, the vast majority of these are distinctive to each patient’s cancer and hence require the development of personalised therapies. Novel immunotherapeutic strategies are focused on breaking immune tolerance to tumor antigens, improving the immunogenicity of tumor vaccines, in addition to overcoming mechanisms of tumor escape. However, current developments and patents in cancer immune therapies, together with associated technologies, are significant. Supreme achievements in immune inhibitor-centered therapies and neo-antigen identification tools envisage probable improvements in cancer vaccines with respect to treatments of malignancies. Antibody modulation of T cell function through checkpoint blockade or co-stimulatory activation may restore survival, proliferation, and effector function. Thus, these tumor-infiltrating T cells with genetically engineered therapeutic vaccines have the potential to act as curative cancer immune therapeutics. In this review, target tumor antigens employed in recent years in the development of therapeutic cancer vaccine approaches are described, and the patents involved in the process are highlighted.