Fueling the engine and releasing the break: combinational therapy of cancer vaccines and immune checkpoint inhibitors

Immune checkpoint inhibitors are increasingly drawing much attention in the therapeutic development for cancer treatment. However, many cancer patients do not respond to treatments with immune checkpoint inhibitors, partly because of the lack of tumor-infiltrating effector T cells. Cancer vaccines may prime patients for treatments with immune checkpoint inhibitors by inducing effector T-cell infiltration into the tumors and immune checkpoint signals. The combination of cancer vaccine and an immune checkpoint inhibitor may function synergistically to induce more effective antitumor immune responses, and clinical trials to test the combination are currently ongoing.