Immunotherapies have transformed cancer care by enlisting the body’s own immune system to fight tumors that have evaded or hijacked normal defenses. But while checkpoint inhibitor drugs and bespoke CAR-T treatments have gained significant ground in recent years, another type of immunotherapy — cancer vaccines — have seen far less success.
New research published this week in Nature Cancer, however, suggests combining a cancer vaccine with adjuvant molecules might boost effectiveness in preventing melanoma recurrence, potentially opening the door to future combinations with other immunotherapies to vanquish cancers.
The idea behind a cancer vaccine is the same as the thinking behind a vaccine against a viral infection like Covid-19. Both work by presenting the immune system with something more harmless than the dangerous invader — like a dead virus or a piece of messenger RNA — in order to instruct immune cells to recognize the bad actors, develop antibodies to fight them, and mount an attack whenever they are encountered.
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