University of Louisville Cancer Research Team: in search of a prophylactic vaccine for human cancer prevention

For more than a century, cancer vaccine research has been persistently conducted by researchers world-wide. The idea that vaccination of animals with fetal material might prevent the outgrowth of tumors was first reported over a hundred years ago by the Schöne’s team (1). Over the past few decades, tumor immunologists have been making concerted efforts in designing a number of well-defined tumor antigens, followed by development of cancer vaccines from these antigens, and were continuously tested in animals and clinical trials. However, there remain a lot of unaddressed questions in terms of efficacy and safety of these vaccines for human use.