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Cancer is a very frequent pathology that accounts for almost half of the deaths in Western countries. Our immune system is capable to light against the appearance and development of tumors but insufficiently. The interest of antitumoral immunotherapy is precisely to make our immune system more prone to react against tumor cell growth. Therapeutic vaccination refers to specific and active immunotherapy aiming to eradicate tumors. Nowadays, preventive vaccines against the viruses which cause liver and cervical cancer are well known. However, the discovery of tumor antigens at the surface of the tumor cells has enabled the development of therapeutic vaccines with the purpose of curing and not only preventing cancer. It consists in exposing the tumor antigen to the immune system in order to induce a response of the T lymphocytes against the cells containing that antigen. There are several ways to introduce this antigen : vaccines can be prepared from whole tumor cells, peptides, proteins, dendritic cells loaded with antigens, bacterial or viral vectors, and even I)NA or RNA. The biggest advantage of these vaccines is the very low rate of side-effects. The Sipuleucel-T is the first vaccine to have been granted a marketing authorization by the FDA for the treatment of prostate cancer. Many clinical studies evaluating vaccines have led to failures but the scientists remain confident. Every day, new informations related to the antitumor immunity allow to improve the design of vaccines and encouraging results have lately been reported in the literature.

Neoplasms --- Immunotherapy, Adoptive --- Cancer Vaccines