Design and evaluation of antigen-specific vaccination strategies against cancer

After studies in preclinical mouse models, the efficacy acid safety of tumo r-specific vaccination strategies is currently being evaluated in cancer pa tients, The first wave of clinical trials has shown that in general such va ccination strategies are safe. However examples of clinical responses, espe cially in conjunction with vaccine-induced immune responses, are still scar ce. The fact that most trials have so far been performed with end-stage can cer patients can largely account for this deficit. Greater efficacy of anti cancer vaccines is expected in patients with less-progressed disease. In ad dition, the detection of both natural and vaccine-induced T cell immunity n eeds further improvement.