Centro de Investigación Médica Aplicada (CIMA), Universidad de Navarra, 31008 Pamplona, Spain.
IdiSNA, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra, 31008 Pamplona, Spain.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Feb 11;23(4):2022. doi: 10.3390/ijms23042022.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have been used as immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with promising but still limited results. Identification of immune elements in the tumor microenvironment of individual HCC patients may help to understand the correlations of responses, as well as to design personalized therapies for non-responder patients. Immune-enhancing strategies, such as vaccination, would complement ICI in those individuals with poorly infiltrated tumors. The prominent role of responses against mutated tumor antigens (neoAgs) in ICI-based therapies suggests that boosting responses against these epitopes may specifically target tumor cells. In this review we summarize clinical vaccination trials carried out in HCC, the available information on potentially immunogenic neoAgs in HCC patients, and the most recent results of neoAg-based vaccines in other tumors. Despite the low/intermediate mutational burden observed in HCC, data obtained from neoAg-based vaccines in other tumors indicate that vaccines directed against these tumor-specific antigens would complement ICI in a subset of HCC patients.
免疫检查点抑制剂（ICI）已被用于治疗肝细胞癌（HCC）的免疫疗法，具有有前途但仍有限的结果。鉴定个体 HCC 患者肿瘤微环境中的免疫成分可能有助于了解反应的相关性，并为无反应患者设计个性化治疗方案。免疫增强策略，如疫苗接种，将与 ICI 一起用于那些肿瘤浸润不良的个体。针对突变肿瘤抗原（neoAg）的反应在基于 ICI 的治疗中的突出作用表明，增强针对这些表位的反应可能会特异性靶向肿瘤细胞。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 HCC 中进行的临床疫苗试验、HCC 患者中潜在免疫原性 neoAg 的可用信息，以及其他肿瘤中基于 neoAg 的疫苗的最新结果。尽管 HCC 中观察到的突变负担较低/中等，但来自其他肿瘤中基于 neoAg 的疫苗的数据表明，针对这些肿瘤特异性抗原的疫苗将与 HCC 患者的亚组中的 ICI 一起使用。
