title: Designing therapeutic cancer vaccines by mimicking viral infections.
abstract: The design of efficacious and cost-effective therapeutic vaccines against cancer remains both a research priority and a challenge. For more than a decade, our laboratory has been involved in the development of synthetic peptide-based anti-cancer therapeutic vaccines. We first dedicated our efforts in the identification and validation of peptide epitopes for both CD8 and CD4 T cells from tumor-associated antigens (TAAs). Because of suboptimal immune responses and lack of therapeutic benefit of peptide vaccines containing these epitopes, we have focused our recent efforts in optimizing peptide vaccinations in mouse tumor models using numerous TAA epitopes. In this focused research review, we describe how after taking lessons from the immune system's way of dealing with acute viral infections, we have designed peptide vaccination strategies capable of generating very high numbers of therapeutically effective CD8 T cells. We also discuss some of the remaining challenges to translate these findings into the clinical setting.
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.|Microbiology and Immunology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
authors.forename: Hussein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sultan
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.
authors.forename: Valentyna I
authors.initials: VI
authors.lastname: Fesenkova
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.
authors.forename: Diane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Addis
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.
authors.forename: Aaron E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.|Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Asahikawa Medical University, Asahikawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Takumi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kumai
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Oncovir, Inc., Washington, DC, 2008, USA.
authors.forename: Andres M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Salazar
authors.affiliation: Augusta University GRU Cancer Center, CN-4121, 1410 Laney Walker Boulevard, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA. ecelis@gru.edu.|Departments of Medicine and Biochemistry, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA. ecelis@gru.edu.
authors.forename: Esteban
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Celis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019496:Cancer Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D008546:Melanoma, Experimental / Q000276:immunology*; D022223:Vaccines, Subunit / Q000276:immunology*; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D019496:Cancer Vaccines; D022223:Vaccines, Subunit
keywords: Cancer immunotherapy; PIVAC 15; Peptide vaccines; Poly-IC; T cell epitopes; Type-I interferon