Progress in Vaccination against Cancer - 2023 (PIVAC-23)

A special issue of Onco (ISSN 2673-7523).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2024) | Viewed by 4259

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Center, Cancer Research Center, Saint Savas Cancer Hospital, 171 Alexandras Avenue, 11522 Athens, Greece
Interests: Immune genes in tumor microenvironment; tumor antigen-specific T-cell receptor frequencies in tumor microenvironment; targeted therapies for cancer; biomarkers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Center, Cancer Research Center, Saint Savas Cancer Hospital, Athens, Greece
Interests: cancer biomarkers; regulation of adaptive antitumor immunity; immune resistance mechanisms; Immune-based therapies for cancer; cancer stem cells
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to the next PIVAC meeting, entitled “The 23rd International Conference on Progress in Vaccination Against Cancer” (PIVAC-23), which will be held from 28th to 30th September 2023 at the Saint Savas Cancer Hospital, 171 Alexandras avenue, Athens, Greece. PIVAC-23 aims to connect scientists working in translational and clinical cancer research for three days of presentations on the most recent advances in the following fields: (i) immunotherapies (cellular, immune checkpoint blockade, vaccines); (ii) innate immunity and tumor control; (iii) host–tumor interactions in the tumor microenvironment; (iv) in vitro and in vivo models for cancer immunotherapies; (v) combinational cancer therapy approaches; and (vi) prognostic and predictive biomarkers in tumors and immune cells.

The website of PIVAC 23 is https://scep.gr/en/events/event/pivac2023/

You are cordially invited to submit your unpublished original work attending to recent advances in all aspects of computational methods related to cancer research for the following topics:

  1. cancer biomarkers for prognosis and prediction
  2. understanding TCR specificity and cross-reactivity for predicting epitope immunogenicity
  3. the tumor microenvironment and regulation of antitumor immunity
  4. immunotherapies and immune resistance
  5. cancer immunotherapies

Dr. Constantin N. Baxevanis
Dr. Sotirios P. Fortis
Dr. Maria Goulielmaki
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • cancer immunotherapy
  • cancer vaccines
  • immune resistance
  • tumor microenvironment
  • biomarkers

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Review

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14 pages, 2368 KiB  
Review
Can Tumour Antigens Act as Biomarkers for the Early Detection of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer?
by Eithar Mohamed, Daniel Fletcher, Simon Hart and Barbara-ann Guinn
Onco 2024, 4(2), 87-100; https://doi.org/10.3390/onco4020008 - 31 May 2024
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Abstract
Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Pulmonary nodules are one of the risk factors, and their discovery rate has been increasing due to enhanced performance of chest CT scans, but more than 90% are non-malignant, causing unnecessary [...] Read more.
Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Pulmonary nodules are one of the risk factors, and their discovery rate has been increasing due to enhanced performance of chest CT scans, but more than 90% are non-malignant, causing unnecessary stress to patients and costs to healthcare providers. Early diagnosis of LC is associated with a 5-year survival rate of up to 75% following surgical resection, but LC is often diagnosed late due to a lack of symptoms and poor 5-year survival rates as low as 10%. The cost of LC diagnosis is high, with 40% of it associated with benign lesions, which are difficult to differentiate from malignant lesions. Tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) may provide one way in which LC could be diagnosed early using minimally-invasive techniques, under their association with immune responses and specificity for disease. Here we discuss the potential of cancer-testis antigens (CTAs) to act as non-invasive biomarkers for the early detection of non-small cell lung cancer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Vaccination against Cancer - 2023 (PIVAC-23))
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10 pages, 612 KiB  
Review
Dendritic Cell Immunotherapy for Ovarian Cancer: An Overview of Our Achievements
by Jiřina Bartůňková
Onco 2024, 4(1), 46-55; https://doi.org/10.3390/onco4010004 - 21 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1583
Abstract
Epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death in women, largely reflecting the early dissemination of this malignant disease to the peritoneum. Due to its immunological features, EOC has poor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), including a limited [...] Read more.
Epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related death in women, largely reflecting the early dissemination of this malignant disease to the peritoneum. Due to its immunological features, EOC has poor response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), including a limited tumor mutational burden (TMB), poor infiltration by immune cells, and active immunosuppression. Thus, novel strategies are needed to overcome the frequent lack of pre-existing immunity in patients with EOC. We developed and tested an autologous dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccine (DCVAC), which has recently been shown to be safe and to significantly improve progression-free survival (PFS) in two independent randomized phase II clinical trials enrolling patients with EOC (SOV01, NCT02107937; SOV02, NCT02107950). In addition, our exploratory data analyses suggest that the clinical benefits of the DCVAC were more pronounced in patients with EOC with lower-than-median TMBs and reduced CD8+ T cell infiltration. Thus, the DC-based vaccine stands out as a promising clinical tool to jumpstart anticancer immunity in patients with immunologically “cold” EOC. Our findings underscore the need for personalized immunotherapy and the clinical relevance of potential tumor-related biomarkers within the immunotherapy field. Additional clinical trials are needed to address these strategies as well as the potential value of the TMB and immune infiltration at baseline as biomarkers for guiding the clinical management of EOC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Vaccination against Cancer - 2023 (PIVAC-23))
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Other

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9 pages, 729 KiB  
Commentary
How Reliable Are Predictions of CD8+ T Cell Epitope Recognition? Lessons for Cancer
by Alexander A. Lehmann, Paul V. Lehmann and Stephen Todryk
Onco 2024, 4(2), 68-76; https://doi.org/10.3390/onco4020006 - 17 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1035
Abstract
Synthetic peptides derived from antigen sequences are essential reagents for the detection of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), in assays such as ELISPOT/ImmunoSpot®. Indeed, the combination of peptides and ImmunoSpot® has been widely used for immune monitoring in numerous [...] Read more.
Synthetic peptides derived from antigen sequences are essential reagents for the detection of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), in assays such as ELISPOT/ImmunoSpot®. Indeed, the combination of peptides and ImmunoSpot® has been widely used for immune monitoring in numerous vaccine trials. Target antigens in pathogens or cancers may be large in size and multiple in number, often seemingly necessitating in silico peptide epitope predictions using algorithms and programs for certain HLA alleles to narrow down the numbers of required peptides. In this commentary, we discuss our data in the context of immune responses to viral and cancer antigens, concluding that systematic high-throughput immune monitoring of CD8+ T cells will provide more reliable insights on the host’s response to cancer than the reliance on select CD8+ T cell epitopes, no matter whether these are in silico predicted or even if they had been empirically established. We show the feasibility of large scale, high-throughput systematic CD8+ T cell epitope testing towards this goal. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Progress in Vaccination against Cancer - 2023 (PIVAC-23))
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