Fig. 1.

The Main Types of Cancer Therapeutic Vaccines: Cancer vaccines primarily deliver antigens either nucleic acids, proteins, peptides, or patient-derived cells. Within nucleic acid-based vaccines, RNA has various approaches that differ with RNA structure manipulation and delivery compared to DNA, which is restricted by exclusively relying on plasmids to deliver antigen-encoding genetic materials. Both mRNA and DNA are taken up by cells and eventually translated into protein antigens APCs present to activate T cells. Cellular vaccines depend on patient-derived cells to deliver isolated tumor cells that are killed, or the patient’s DCs are activated in vitro with purified tumor antigens before reinjection. All therapeutic cancer vaccine types aim for antigen presentation followed by T cell activation and tumor rejection. Abbreviations: DC, Dendritic Cells; SAM, virus-derived self-amplifying mRNAs; SLP, synthetic long peptide.