Personalized neoantigen-based cancer immunotherapy. A literature review

Introduction: The progress made in cancer immunotherapy and the clinical response of patients who have undergone this type of therapy have made it the fourth pillar of cancer treatment. Objective: To briefly describe the biological rationale of personalized neoantigen-based cancer immunotherapy, the current perspectives regarding its development, and some of the clinical outcomes achieved with this therapy. Materials and methods: A literature search was performed in PubMed, Scopus and EBSCO using the following search strategy: type of articles: original experimental studies, clinical trials, and narrative and systematic reviews addressing methods to identify mutations found in tumors and cancer immunotherapy strategies based on neoantigen-based vaccines; study population: humans and animal models; publication period: January 1989 - December 2019; language: English and Spanish; search terms: “Immunotherapy”, “Neoplasms”, “Mutation” and “Cancer Vaccines”. Results: The initial search started with 1 344 records. Once duplicates were removed (n=176), 780 studies were excluded after reading their abstract and title. The full text of 338 articles was read to confirm which met the inclusion criteria, finally including 73 studies for full analysis. All articles retrieved were published in English and were mainly conducted in the USA (43.83%) and Germany (23.65%). In the case of original studies (n=43), 20 were performed in humans only, 9 in animals only, 2 in both models, and 12 used in silico methodology. Conclusion: Personalized cancer immunotherapy with tumor neoantigen-based vaccines is strongly emerging as a new alternative to treat cancer. However, to achieve its appropriate implementation, it is necessary to use it in combination with conventional treatments, produce more knowledge that helps clarify cancer immunobiology, and reduce the costs associated with its production.