Charalampopoulou Anna, Filippatos Charalampos, Malandrakis Panagiotis, Zagouri Flora, Gavriatopoulou Maria, Ntanasis-Stathopoulos Ioannis
Department of Clinical Therapeutics, Athens School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Breast Cancer. 2025 Sep;32(5):892-904. doi: 10.1007/s12282-025-01751-1. Epub 2025 Aug 5.
Cancer vaccines offer an innovative approach to treating advanced breast cancer, by activating the immune system to recognize and target cancer cells, aiming to boost immune response, reduce relapse, and enhance patients' quality of life.
A systematic database search was conducted for peer-reviewed, full-text articles on clinical trials focused on cancer vaccines for advanced breast cancer, in the MEDLINE, SCOPUS, Cochrane and ClinicalTrials.gov databases, from conception until October 23, 2024.
A total of 19 trials, involving 747 patients with advanced breast cancer, were included in this systematic review. Cancer vaccine trials rely primarily on immunological endpoints, with initial small-scale studies showing modest efficacy improvements and highly variable immune response rates (44-100%), suggesting opportunities for further optimization and broader clinical application.
While the overall quality of the studies was acceptable, heterogeneity in results and limited survival or progression outcomes prevented data synthesis. In conclusion, despite promising findings, the lack of large-scale randomized trials limits definitive conclusions on cancer vaccine efficacy, highlighting the need for Phase III trials to confirm their clinical utility and long-term impact.
癌症疫苗为治疗晚期乳腺癌提供了一种创新方法，通过激活免疫系统来识别和靶向癌细胞，旨在增强免疫反应、减少复发并提高患者生活质量。
在MEDLINE、SCOPUS、Cochrane和ClinicalTrials.gov数据库中，对从数据库建立至2024年10月23日期间发表的、经同行评审的关于晚期乳腺癌癌症疫苗临床试验的全文文章进行了系统检索。
本系统评价共纳入19项试验，涉及747例晚期乳腺癌患者。癌症疫苗试验主要依赖免疫学终点指标，最初的小规模研究显示疗效有适度改善，免疫反应率差异很大（44%-100%），这表明有进一步优化和更广泛临床应用的机会。
虽然研究的总体质量可以接受，但结果的异质性以及有限的生存或进展结果妨碍了数据综合分析。总之，尽管有令人鼓舞的发现，但缺乏大规模随机试验限制了对癌症疫苗疗效得出确定性结论，这凸显了开展III期试验以证实其临床效用和长期影响的必要性。
