Mutation burden: a limiting factor for personal cancer vaccines?

Cancer vaccines are not a new therapy; they have been tried on patients as early as 1890. Since diseases have increasingly been cured or controlled with the benefit of vaccines, tumor vaccines have also drawn much attention and become one of the promising therapies to cure cancer. A great number of studies of cancer vaccines have been carried out, but only vaccines against viruses whose infection could cause cancer, such as HBV and HPV, have been proved effective and used by large population groups.