Allogeneic breast cancer cell vaccines.

Cancer vaccines are currently a major focus of immunotherapy research. The combination of specific targeting and low levels of toxicity makes vaccination an attractive approach. There are a variety of immunogens that can be employed to vaccinate patients in order to induce or enhance an antitumor response. The observation that most T-cell priming occurs via presentation of tumor antigens from tumor cells engulfed by host antigen-presenting cells, rather than by direct presentation by vaccine tumor cells themselves, provides the immunological rationale for an allogeneic tumor cell vaccine approach. Furthermore, there are practical advantages over an autologous tumor cell vaccine approach. We summarize herein the limited experience using allogeneic whole cell vaccines in patients with breast cancer. We also describe in vitro immunological results using peripheral blood mononuclear cells from women with stage IV breast cancer who were enrolled in a phase I trial employing a human leukocyte antigen-A2—matched, CD80-modified, allogeneic, whole cell vaccine. Clinical trials employing allogeneic tumor cell vaccines have achieved encouraging immunological and clinical effects in stage IV patients. Allogeneic tumor cell vaccines are safe, feasible, and associated with low toxicity, and the early clinical results suggest that they are worthy of further study.