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JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2002 94(20):1523-1526; doi:10.1093/jnci/94.20.1523
© 2002 by Oxford University Press
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Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 94, No. 20, 1523-1526, October 16, 2002
© 2002 Oxford University Press

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Cancer Vaccines: Finding the Best Way to Train the Immune System

Bruce Goldman

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Cancer immunotherapy has traditionally focused on forcing the immune system to hunt down so-called "shared antigens"—specific proteins that are overexpressed in tumors of a specific type—with the hope that the body’s own immune system will attack and destroy any cancer cell that overexpresses the antigen. The theoretical virtue of a shared antigen is that it can form the basis of a widely applicable, relatively inexpensive vaccine. Such an antigen can be precisely characterized, mass-produced, and metered out in carefully calibrated quantities.

Shared antigens have their drawbacks, though. They have been identified in only a relatively small percentage of tumor types and, even for those tumor types that have shared antigens, they are found on only a fraction of tumors.

And even when found, shared antigens have invariably turned out to be "self-antigens": that is, while abundant in tumor tissue, they are also expressed in healthy tissue. Carcinoembryonic antigen, or CEA, . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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