TY - JOUR
T1 - The importance of the age factor in cancer vaccination at older age
AU - Gravekamp, Claudia
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments This work was supported by NIA grant 1RO1 AG023096-01, the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) A000106, and NCI grant 1R21CA129470-01A1.
PY - 2009/12
Y1 - 2009/12
N2 - Cancer is an age-related disease, and with the graying of the society there is an increasing need to optimize cancer management and therapy to elderly patients. Vaccine therapy for cancer is less toxic than chemotherapy or radiation and could be, therefore, especially effective in older, more frail cancer patients. However, it has been shown that older individuals do not respond to vaccine therapy as well as younger adults. This has been attributed to T cell unresponsiveness, a phenomenon also observed in cancer patients per se. Therefore, research is needed to establish whether age-specific tumor-immunological variables permit optimal use of cancer vaccines and therapy in the elderly. This review summarizes the current knowledge of T cell unresponsiveness in cancer patients and elderly, and the results of cancer vaccination in preclinical models at young and old age. Finally, new directions that may lead to effective cancer vaccination at older age will be proposed.
AB - Cancer is an age-related disease, and with the graying of the society there is an increasing need to optimize cancer management and therapy to elderly patients. Vaccine therapy for cancer is less toxic than chemotherapy or radiation and could be, therefore, especially effective in older, more frail cancer patients. However, it has been shown that older individuals do not respond to vaccine therapy as well as younger adults. This has been attributed to T cell unresponsiveness, a phenomenon also observed in cancer patients per se. Therefore, research is needed to establish whether age-specific tumor-immunological variables permit optimal use of cancer vaccines and therapy in the elderly. This review summarizes the current knowledge of T cell unresponsiveness in cancer patients and elderly, and the results of cancer vaccination in preclinical models at young and old age. Finally, new directions that may lead to effective cancer vaccination at older age will be proposed.
KW - Cancer vaccines
KW - Mage-b DNA vaccine
KW - Metastatic breast cancer
KW - Old age
KW - T cell unresponsiveness
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U2 - 10.1007/s00262-009-0683-x
DO - 10.1007/s00262-009-0683-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 19259666
AN - SCOPUS:79958101860
SN - 0340-7004
VL - 58
SP - 1969
EP - 1977
JO - Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy
JF - Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy
IS - 12
ER -