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Modern cancer vaccines hold the promise of exhibiting targeted effects on cancer cells without dramatic toxicities. This gives them potential advantages over conventional chemotherapeutics or radiation, which have dominated cancer therapy for decades despite their poisonous or otherwise harmful side effects and less than moderate therapeutic benefits. Although some cancer vaccines are in late-stage clinical development, they still have to deliver on the promise of sufficient clinical efficacy in randomized trials. The key, then, is to find the factors that drive the efficacy of cancer vaccines.
The concept of using the immune system to fight cancer has existed for more than a century. One of its early examples is the pioneering work ofDr. William Coley (1862-1936) who observed tumor regression in cancer patients with certain severe infections. He subsequently treated patients with a bacterial broth that came to be known as "Coley's Toxins." His approach provided benefit to some patients but also had serious side effects with potentially fatal outcomes. Since then, the approaches to cancer vaccines have evolved substantially, especially due to the more recent availability of molecular tools for genetic engineering and a more profound understanding of the immune system as well as the mechanisms of human cancer....