Recent Developments of Vaccines as a Precision Medicine Approach to Cancer Immunotherapy

Precision medicine involves tailoring an individual's genes or proteins to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases such as cancer. Given the recent advances in cancer immunotherapy, there is now a focus on developing vaccines as a new treatment modality. Therapeutic vaccines for cancer are a precision medicine approach that has made enormous progress in recent years due to advances in vaccine engineering. This technology uses antigens derived from the patient's tumor to create vaccines that are unique and specific to that patient. Although challenges remain, significant progress has been made in recent years, largely due to the advent of mRNA vaccines. This mini-review primarily focuses on developments in vaccine engineering, outstanding therapeutic obstacles, and recent human clinical trials.