On combining antineoplastic drugs with tumor vaccines

Excerpt

Over the past 2 decades, the classical paradigm of tri-modal cancer therapy has been expanded to include immunotherapy, encompassing both passive, adoptive T-cell transfer techniques as well as active vaccination strategies. As the mainstay of anticancer therapy, antineoplastic drugs have long been used for their direct tumoricidal properties, while the immunosuppressive adverse effects have been merely tolerated and supported. With the advent of the increasing use of immunotherapy in the clinical setting, investigators have sought to determine ways in which to combine accepted chemotherapeutic regimens with innovative immunotherapeutic techniques, and have discovered that the lymphodepletion that results from antineoplastic drug administration may be, in some cases, advantageous in eliciting clinically relevant responses to cancer immunotherapy. As well, several of these drugs have been found, paradoxically, to actually augment antitumor immunity. There is a paucity of preclinical and clinical data to date on combining chemotherapy and antitumor vaccines, as this is a strategy in its infancy. However, it may ultimately be found that chemotherapy combined with vaccine therapy offers therapeutic advantages over single-modality treatment. Here we will explore the available data regarding the mechanisms behind enhancement of antitumor efficacy through the combination of antineoplastic drugs with tumor vaccines. …