The success of cancer vaccination depends on the ability of therapeutics to sustain prolonged immune activation, leading to the destruction of tumor cells. However, only a few therapeutic cancer vaccines have been FDA-approved due to challenges in targeting and eliciting a sufficiently strong immune response. Peptides have emerged as promising drugs owing to their ability to interact with cell-surface receptors and their low manufacturing cost. Despite the peptides' positive characteristics, additional research is needed to develop more effective methods for using peptides to stimulate the immune system for a sustained period to induce tumor cell regression. This review focuses on recent work in peptide-based vaccine design and development, aiming to determine the optimal formulation of peptide vaccines by identifying and isolating neoantigens for tumor targeting, thereby delivering peptide antigens to specific locations. The expansion of the current landscape of cancer treatments, including peptide vaccines and combination therapies, is revolutionizing the possibilities for patient care and treatment.
Treiterer et al. (Thu,) studied this question.