LAUSR

Mobilizing antitumour immunity through vaccination potentially constitutes a powerful anticancer strategy but has not yet provided robust clinical benefits in large patient populations. Although major hurdles still exist, we believe that currently available strategies for vaccines that target dendritic cells or use them to present antitumour antigens could be integrated into existing clinical practice using prime–boost approaches. In the priming phase, these approaches capitalize on either standard treatment modalities to trigger in situ vaccination and release tumour antigens or vaccination with dendritic cells loaded with tumour lysates or patient-specific neoantigens. In a second boost phase, personalized synthetic vaccines specifically boost T cells that were triggered during the priming phase. This immunotherapy approach has been enabled by the substantial recent improvements in dendritic cell vaccines. In this Perspective, we discuss these improvements, highlight how the prime–boost approach can be translated into clinical practice and provide solutions for various anticipated hurdles. Dendritic cell vaccines have been widely investigated as a type of cancer immunotherapy, but their promise has not yet been realized. Kandalaft and colleagues propose that a prime and boost approach — primed with either standard therapies or dendritic cell vaccines and boosted with a personalized synthetic vaccine — could help fulfil the potential of such vaccines. They discuss improvements in dendritic cell vaccines that have enabled prime–boost approaches, as well as challenges for adoption.