Cancer vaccines Wiki

Question 1

What are the two approaches to cancer vaccination?

Answer 1

1. Separate proteins from cancer cells and immunize patient against these proteins as antigens, in the hope of stimulating the immune system to kill the cancer cells.
2. Generate an immune response in situ in the patient using oncolytic viruses. Approach used in the drug talimogene laherparepvec, a version of the herpes simplex virus egineered to selectively replicate in tumour tissue and to express the immune stimulatory protein CGM-CSF.

Question 2

What is an example of a drug developed to generate an immune response in situ in the patient using oncolytic viruses?

Answer 2

Talimogene Laherparepvec - version of herpes simplex virus engineered to selectively replicate in tumour tissue and to express the immune stimulatory protein GM-CSF.

Question 3

What is Provenge?

Answer 3

A cancer vaccine designed to treat prostate cancer, gained approval in 2010 by FDA.

Question 4

What is BiovaxID?

Answer 4

BiovaxID (Dasiprotimut-T) is a cancer vaccine for follicular Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Question 5

What is Oncophage?

Answer 5

Given to Kidney cancer patients who are at intermediate risk for disease recurrence.

Cancer vaccine.

Question 6

What are the desirable characteristics of cancer vaccines?

Answer 6

1. Must be able to seek a tumour-specific antigen.
2. Must be distinct from self-proteins.
3. An effective vaccine should also seek to stimulate long term memory to prevent tumour recurrence.

Question 7

Antigen candidates for cancer vaccines are of what two types?

Answer 7

Shared tumour antigens: expressed by many tumours.

Unique tumour antigens: result from mutations induced through physical or chemical carcinogens; they are therefore expressed only by individual tumours.

Question 8

Why is Hsp70 used as an adjucant in the development of antitumour vaccines?

Answer 8

Hsp70 plays an important role in the presentation of antigens of destroyed cells including cancer cells, this protein may be used as an effective adjuvant in the development of antitumour vaccines.

Question 9

The most effective vaccine is likely to raise an immune response against a broad range of antigens, why is this?

Answer 9

This will result in a minimisation of the chance that a tumour will mutate and become resistant to the therapy.

This is because tumours are hetergenous and antigen expression differs markedly between tumours, even in the same patient.