Recent advances in neoantigen vaccines for treating non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract

The breakthrough of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockade therapy has changed the clinical treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the past few years. The success of PD-1 blockade therapy has been attributed to high tumor mutation burden and high immunogenicity of lung cancer cells. To further improve the efficacy of NSCLC immunotherapy and overcome the resistance of lung cancer cells to immune checkpoint blockade, new approaches that enhance the active immune response, such as neoantigen vaccines and cellular-based therapies, are urgently required. Neoantigens are considered ideal targets for cancer immunotherapy because of their high immunogenicity and specificity. In this mini review, we first discuss the current advances in neoantigen vaccines for treating cancers and then review the results of preclinical studies and early-phase human clinical trials of neoantigen-based therapies for NSCLC. Finally, we focus on the identification of neoantigens in patients with NSCLC and review the candidate mutations reported by recent studies and our investigations. The review concludes that, in addition to immune checkpoint blockade, approaches targeting neoantigens are promising for improving the efficacy of NSCLC immunotherapy.

Keywords: immunotherapy; lung cancer; neoantigen; vaccine.