Cancer vaccines have emerged as powerful and clinically viable therapeutic modalities to reduce tumor burden, eradicate residual cancer cells and prevent relapse. The past years have witnessed rapid advances in various scientific and engineering approaches to next-generation cancer vaccines. This perspective highlights the cutting-edge technologies to elicit robust, durable and cancer-specific immune responses as well as interesting research directions in augmenting the therapeutic efficacies and reducing the systemic side effects of cancer vaccines. The featured technologies include (i) bottom-up high-throughput screening strategies to identify neoantigens as well as optimal delivery systems for tumor antigens and/or adjuvant; (ii) top-down knowledge-based strategies to de novo design effective delivery platforms and to engineer tissue-targeting specificity; and (iii) synergizing cancer vaccines with the clinical immunotherapeutic practices such as CAR-T and anti-PD-1 therapies.
Keywords: Cancer vaccine; Immunotherapy; Nanovaccines; Neoantigen; Targeted delivery.
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