Tumor vaccine design: concepts, mechanisms, and efficacy testing.

This paper deals with the design of tumor vaccines for either prophylactic application, such as viral vaccines, or for therapeutic application in cancer patients. It discusses important aspects in the design of vaccines which come from experience in the fields of infectious diseases and autoimmunity. As examples of tumor vaccines which are presently being tested, virus-infected tumor cell vaccines and gene-transfected tumor cell vaccines are further discussed. Such live cell vaccines are compared with oncolysate vaccines or vaccines prepared from purified tumor antigens and adjuvants. Future perspectives of such approaches for biotherapy of cancer are also discussed.