Peptide-Based Vaccines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Review of Recent Advances

Jimmy Charneau; Toshihiro Suzuki; Manami Shimomura; Norihiro Fujinami; Tetsuya Nakatsura

doi:10.2147/JHC.S291558

Peptide-Based Vaccines for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Review of Recent Advances

J Hepatocell Carcinoma. 2021 Sep 2:8:1035-1054. doi: 10.2147/JHC.S291558. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jimmy Charneau¹, Toshihiro Suzuki^{1

2}, Manami Shimomura¹, Norihiro Fujinami¹, Tetsuya Nakatsura¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Cancer Immunotherapy, Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center, National Cancer Center, Kashiwa City, Japan.
² Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Teikyo University, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

Primary liver cancer is the sixth most commonly diagnosed cancer and the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. After surgery, up to 70% of patients experience relapses. The current first-line therapy for advanced cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) comprises sorafenib and lenvatinib administered as single-drug therapies. Regorafenib, cabozantinib, and ramucirumab are administered as second-line therapies. Recently, it has been reported that using the immune checkpoint inhibitors atezolizumab (anti-PDL1 antibody) and bevacizumab (anti-VEGF antibody) leads to longer overall survival of unresectable cases, when compared with the use of sorafenib. The role of cancer immunity against HCC has attracted the attention of clinicians. In this review, we describe our phase I/II clinical trials of peptide vaccines targeting GPC3 in HCC and discuss the potential of peptide vaccines targeting common cancer antigens that are highly expressed in HCC, such as WT-I, AFP, ROBO1, and FOXM1. Further, we introduce recent cancer vaccines targeting neoantigens, which have attracted attention in recent times, as well as present our preclinical studies, the results of which might aid to initiate a neoantigen vaccine clinical trial, which would be the first of its kind in Japan.

Keywords: cancer vaccine; common cancer antigen; glypican-3; neoantigen; personalized peptide vaccine.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the collaboration fee with the corresponding author and Brightpath Bio Co. Ltd (Tokyo, Japan). Although the funding body mainly contributed to the results of Figure 4, Brightpath Bio Co. Ltd had no control over the writing, or publication in this review.