Therapeutic and Prophylactic Cancer Vaccines: Emerging Perspectives from Allogeneic and Infectious Disease Vaccines

Recently, mRNA vaccines have become a significant type of therapeutic and have created new fields in the biopharmaceutical industry. mRNA vaccines are promising next-generation vaccines that have introduced a new age in vaccinology. The recent approval of two COVID-19 mRNA vaccines (mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2) has accelerated mRNA vaccine technology and boosted the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. These mRNA vaccines will help to tackle COVID-19 pandemic through immunization, offering considerable hope for future mRNA vaccines. Human trials with data both from mRNA cancer vaccines and mRNA infectious disease vaccines have provided encouraging results, inspiring the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to focus on this area of research. In this article, we discuss current mRNA vaccines broadly in two parts. In the first part, mRNA vaccines in general and COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are discussed. We presented the mRNA vaccine structure in general, the different delivery systems, the immune response, and the recent clinical trials for mRNA vaccines (both for cancer mRNA vaccines and different infectious diseases mRNA vaccines). In the second part, different COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are explained. Finally, we illustrated a snapshot of the different leading mRNA vaccine developers, challenges, and future prospects of mRNA vaccines.

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Cancer vaccines

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2011.0101 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 366 (1579) ◽

pp. 2823-2826 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Margaret A. Liu

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Hepatocellular Carcinoma ◽

Monoclonal Antibodies ◽

Immune System ◽

Cancer Therapy ◽

Hepatitis B ◽

Infectious Diseases ◽

Cancer Vaccines ◽

Immune Surveillance ◽

Subsequent Cancer

While vaccines are primarily thought of in terms of their use for prevention of infectious diseases, they can potentially be used to prevent or treat cancer. This manuscript explores the rationale for vaccines and immunotherapies for cancer from both the scientific and the global needs perspectives. Pathogens that are aetiologic agents of certain cancers provide perhaps the most obvious successful examples of the prophylactic utility of vaccines (such as the hepatitis B vaccine) to prevent not just the infectious disease (hepatitis), but the potential subsequent cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma). The use of monoclonal antibodies illustrates the effectiveness of the immune system for cancer therapy. In addition, the increased understanding of the role and mechanisms of the immune system in the processes of immune surveillance, as well as of its failure during immunosuppression, have yielded better insights into how to design cancer vaccines and immunotherapies. Examples of targets for cancer vaccines will be discussed, as will the challenges and few successes in this arena.

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Tissue section lifting for electron microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100081292 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 86-87

Author(s):

Adrian F. van Dellen

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Electron Microscopy ◽

Tissue Culture ◽

Organ System ◽

Surrounding Tissue ◽

Paraffin Sections ◽

Surface Areas ◽

Specific Determination ◽

High Degree ◽

Accuracy And Repeatability

The morphologic pathologist may require information on the ultrastructure of a non-specific lesion seen under the light microscope before he can make a specific determination. Such lesions, when caused by infectious disease agents, may be sparsely distributed in any organ system. Tissue culture systems, too, may only have widely dispersed foci suitable for ultrastructural study. In these situations, when only a few, small foci in large tissue areas are useful for electron microscopy, it is advantageous to employ a methodology which rapidly selects a single tissue focus that is expected to yield beneficial ultrastructural data from amongst the surrounding tissue. This is in essence what "LIFTING" accomplishes. We have developed LIFTING to a high degree of accuracy and repeatability utilizing the Microlift (Fig 1), and have successfully applied it to tissue culture monolayers, histologic paraffin sections, and tissue blocks with large surface areas that had been initially fixed for either light or electron microscopy.

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