Vaccines are one of the most effective medical interventions to combat newly emerging and re-emerging diseases. Prophylactic
vaccines against
rabies,
measles, etc., have excellent effectiveness in preventing
viral infection and associated diseases. However, the host immune response is unable to inhibit virus replication or eradicate established diseases in most infected people. Therapeutic
vaccines, expressing specific endogenous or exogenous
antigens, mainly induce or boost cell-mediated immunity via provoking cytotoxic T cells or elicit humoral immunity via activating B cells to produce specific
antibodies. The ultimate aim of a therapeutic
vaccine is to reshape the host immunity for eradicating a disease and establishing lasting memory. Therefore, therapeutic
vaccines have been developed for the treatment of some
infectious diseases and chronic
noncommunicable diseases. Various technological strategies have been implemented for the development of therapeutic
vaccines, including molecular-based
vaccines (peptide/
protein,
DNA and
mRNA vaccines), vector-based
vaccines (bacterial vector
vaccines, viral vector
vaccines and yeast-based
vaccines) and cell-based
vaccines (dendritic cell
vaccines and genetically modified cell
vaccines) as well as combinatorial approaches. This review mainly summarizes therapeutic
vaccine-induced immunity and describes the development and status of multiple types of therapeutic
vaccines against
infectious diseases, such as those caused by HPV, HBV, HIV, HCV, and SARS-CoV-2, and chronic
noncommunicable diseases, including
cancer,
hypertension,
Alzheimer's disease,
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, diabetes, and
dyslipidemia, that have been evaluated in recent preclinical and clinical studies.