Cancer Vaccines: Is There Reason for Optimism?

http://www.medscape.com/Medscape/oncology/journal/2002/mo0108.01.webe/mo0108.01.webe-01.html

Expert Column
Cancer Vaccines: Is There Reason for Optimism?

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD

Introduction

In spite of 20 years of development and great commotion in the lay press about the next cancer vaccine, whose regulatory approval is right around the corner, no cancer vaccine has yet been shown to provide clear patient benefit in a randomized trial and consequently no vaccine for cancer has yet been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Should the practicing clinician feel that the cancer vaccine field is moribund, with little to offer to patients with metastatic cancer? Or is there reason for optimism? I firmly believe that the latter is true, as shown by several early-generation cancer vaccines like CancerVax and Melacine, which are nearing the conclusion of large randomized phase 3 trials, the outcome of which, if successful, would lead to FDA approval.

In this column, I will discuss new developments in the use of dendritic cells (DCs) and viral vectors as cancer vaccines that hold promise for rapid development, and suggest that patients in a number of clinical settings should be referred by community physicians for investigational vaccine trials.

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Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.

Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, has no significant financial interests to disclose.

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