Despite the advances in cancer biology, prevention, and treatment over the past few decades, cancer continues to be among the top three killers globally, thus the need for evolving innovative measures to curb its prevalence. Among these, vaccines have been introduced as tools not only to prevent the normally caused infectious diseases but also to treat cancer. Vaccination in cancer prevention and therapy is an effective breakthrough in modern oncology, which means a possibility of reducing cancer incidence with the help of immunotherapy. 

Understanding Cancer Prevention

Cancer prevention includes steps that are geared towards the prevention of occurrences of the disease. This encompasses changes in life patterns, periodic checks, and, to a great extent prevention through immunization against diseases. Vaccination also comes under the primary prevention process because it directly aimed at infectious agent which is capable of causing cancer like HPV, HBV etc.

Cancer immunization deals with the application of vaccines with a view to stimulating the immune system to respond specifically against cancer cells and/or cancer-associated pathogens. Unlike other types of vaccines that relate to immunizations against grievous infections, cancer vaccines either stop cancer-inducing infections or enhance the treatment of cancers by helping the body’s defence mechanism see cancer cells as pathogens that should be destroyed.

Preventive Cancer Vaccines

Primary prevention seeks to prevent cancer in individuals as a result of the immunization of the specific virus associated with cancers. Two notable examples are:

HPV Vaccine: HPV strains cause most cervical cancers and also other cancers like anal, oropharyngeal or genital cancers; hence the HPV vaccine. Since HPV is a major cause of these cancers, the mentioned vaccines lower the risk of such diseases considerably.

HBV Vaccine: It is true to note that the hepatitis B virus is a leading cause of liver cancer. To this end, vaccination can be used to control the spread of HBV and thereby decrease the incidence of liver cancer.

Kinds of Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines

Peptide Vaccines: These vaccines are designed to utilize specific peptides (short chains of amino acids of cancer antigens) to invoke an immune response. To enhance the immune system response, peptide vaccines have been developed to deliver large antigens specific to cancer cells with low effects on normal cells.

Dendritic Cell Vaccines: Other types include dendritic cells, these are immune cells that in particular present antigens to T-cells, then the immune response is triggered. Dendritic cell vaccines are also known because of their ability to fill with antigens from cancer cells, and then the cells are returned to the patient’s body for immune response creation against cancer cells.

DNA and RNA Vaccines: These vaccines employ recipient DNA or RNA code to turn out antigens related to cancer. Where upon, the cells will absorb the genetic makeup and synthesise the antigen that the genetic code specifies as presenting the signal to the immune system for a response to the cancer.

Cancer Treatment Vaccines: How do they work against cancer?

Cancer treatment vaccines are a form of immunotherapy that treats cancer by enhancing the body’s ability to fight cancer. While cancer prevention vaccines are given to healthy individuals to prevent cancer, cancer treatment vaccines are given to patients who already have cancer, and they act against cancer cells.

The concept of treatment vaccines is that cancer cells have proteins that are not found in normal cells or are present in smaller quantities. The treatment vaccines can help the immune system to understand what antigens are and how to attack cancer cells with these antigens.

Cancer treatment vaccines can be produced in three basic ways

They can be made from your own tumour cells. This means they are made in order to provoke an immune response against things that are specific to your cancer.

These may be formed from tumor-associated antigens that are present in the cancer cells of many patients with a particular type of cancer. Such a vaccine can trigger an immune reaction in any patient whose cancer makes that antigen. This type of vaccine is still in the trial stage.

They can be produced from your own dendritic cells, which are a kind of immune cell. Dendritic cell vaccines work by activating your immune system to target an antigen present in tumour cells. There is only one dendritic cell vaccine, sipuleucel-T, which is used in some men with advanced prostate cancer.

Vaccines and Their Potential in Cancer Prevention and Control

Immunologists working as a team are likely to make revolutionary breakthroughs and cancer vaccines targeting specific tumour markers will be developed.

Combination Therapies

Intersecting cancer vaccines with other immunotherapy procedures like immune checkpoint inhibitors has been proven to have a positive impact on the encouraging results of the treatment process. Checkpoint inhibitors help the brakes to be off on the immune system, hence making it easier to fight cancer cells. It is also to be noted that when used in conjunction with empty cancer vaccines, they can promote an enhanced immunological response in the patients.

Challenges and Considerations

There are several issues that have not yet been fully resolved. Some of the issues that have been highlighted include the choice of the right antigens to be targeted, the possibility of having vigorous and sustained immune responses, and the capacity to counteract the suppressive effects of the tumour. Also, the four mentioned techniques: affordability, availability, constraints, and accessibility of these new treatments and therapies need to be overcome to expand patients’ choices.

The Bottom Line

Here, it is essential to highlight that vaccines are currently used to prevent and even treat cancer. In vaccines like HPV and HBV, cancer prevention has been observed to have immense effectiveness in lowering cancer rates. TCVs can be viewed as a prospective perspective to locating existing cancers through immune-mediated killing. The promise of cancer vaccines is still as bright as ever, and as science progresses, the use of cancer vaccines as cancer treatments needs to be incorporated into practice oncology to reduce global cancer incidence effectively.