Vaccine therapy for cancer: fact or fiction?

Great strides in the understanding of regulation of the immune system have led to development of strategies to harness the potential of cellular immune responses for improving the outcome for cancer patients. To generate a cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) response to cancer cells requires tumor-specific antigens processed appropriately and displayed by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, T-lymphocytes with receptors of appropriate specificity, and co-stimulation delivered by antigen-presenting cells through members of the B7 family. In this review, the fundamental advances that have been made in tumor antigen discovery, and the novel vaccine approaches arising from these advances are discussed.