Cancer Vaccines

Vaccines were originally developed as a prophylactic agent, administered to healthy individuals to induce long-term immunity against a pathogen and to prevent the outbreak of viral diseases. Therapeutic vaccines aim at inducing strong antigen-specific T cell responses. In contrast to prophylactic vaccines, they are used in patients who already have a growing, established tumor. In the field of cancer immunotherapy, prophylactic vaccination only applies to the few virally induced malignancies, such as the vaccine against hepatitis B virus that can cause liver cancer, or the nowadays widespread human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination of teenagers, which aims to prevent genital cancers induced by high-risk HPV strains. https://www.creative-biolabs.com/vaccine/cancer-vaccines.htm