CHEMICAL BIOLOGY : A three-in-one approach to cancer vaccines

A single chemical structure that incorporates three vaccine components could prove powerful in treating cancer.Sugars are often highly expressed on the outside of cancer cells, and eliciting an immune response to these sugars could be an important vaccine strategy.

Previous attempts to develop anticancer vaccines against these overexpressed sugars have involved ‘two-component’ vaccines, which combine molecules that can induce antibody production by two different routes into a single chemical entity. However, these vaccines require very high levels of adjuvants—additional chemicals that are used to boost the immune response being elicited by the vaccine.

Geert-Jan Boons and colleagues have now developed a ‘three-component’ vaccine that chemically links the adjuvant to two other vaccine components. Chemically connecting these three vaccine pieces proved to be exceptionally powerful in inducing an immune response in mice. This vaccine strategy can now be tested for its ability to combat cancer, and the three-component approach could be applied to other vaccine targets.

Author contact:

Geert-Jan Boons (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA)

Tel: +1 706 542 9161; E-mail: gjboons@ccrc.uga.edu