title: Vaccine therapy for B-cell lymphomas: next-generation strategies.
abstract: Active immunotherapy is a promising approach for the treatment of lymphomas. Immunization with the clonal tumor immunoglobulin, idiotype, expressed on the surface of B-cell malignancies was associated with induction of tumor-specific cellular and humoral immunity, molecular remissions, and prolonged disease-free survival in early clinical trials. Idiotype vaccination was also demonstrated to induce tumor-specific T-cell immunity in the absence of B cells following treatment with rituximab-containing chemotherapy, suggesting that vaccines may be used in combination with rituximab. Three double-blind randomized phase 3 idiotype vaccine trials are currently ongoing to definitively determine the clinical benefit of idiotype vaccination in patients with lymphoma. Novel second-generation lymphoma vaccines are in development to streamline the production of patient-specific cancer vaccines and show encouraging results in preclinical and pilot clinical studies. To enhance the clinical efficacy of active immunotherapy, future clinical trials are likely to use a combination strategy with the lymphoma vaccine to stimulate an antitumor T-cell response and the simultaneous suppression of immune regulatory pathways to augment the induced T-cell response.
authors.affiliation: Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd., Unit 429, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Sattva S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Neelapu
authors.forename: Larry W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Kwak
mesh_terms: D000888:Antibodies, Anti-Idiotypic / Q000276:immunology; D000917:Antibody Formation; D019496:Cancer Vaccines / Q000276:immunology / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D007111:Immunity, Cellular; D016393:Lymphoma, B-Cell / Q000276:immunology / Q000628:therapy*
chemical_list: D000888:Antibodies, Anti-Idiotypic; D019496:Cancer Vaccines