Immunotherapy, including
immune checkpoint blockade and
chimeric antigen receptor T cells, is one of the most promising approaches to treat
cancer.
Vaccines have been effective in preventing
cancers like
liver cancer and
cervical cancer with a viral etiology. Instead of preventing disease, therapeutic
cancer vaccines mobilize the immune system to attack existing
cancer. p53 is dysregulated in the majority of human
cancers and is a highly promising target for
cancer vaccines. Over twenty clinical trials have targeted p53 in malignant diseases using
vaccines. In this work, we review the progress of vaccinations with p53 or its
peptides as the
antigens and summarize the clinical and immunological effects of p53-targeting
vaccines from clinical trials. The delivery platforms include p53
peptides, viral vectors, and dendritic cells pulsed with short
peptides or transduced by p53-encoding viruses. These studies shed light on the feasibility, safety, and clinical benefit of p53 vaccination in select groups of patients, implicating that p53-targeting
vaccines warrant further investigations in experimental animals and human studies.