The recent developments in immuno-oncology have opened an unprecedented avenue for the emergence of vaccine strategies. Therapeutic DNA cancer vaccines are now considered a very promising strategy to activate the immune system against cancer. In the past, several clinical trials using plasmid DNA vaccines demonstrated a good safety profile and the activation of a broad and specific immune response. However, these vaccines often demonstrated only modest therapeutic effects in clinical trials due to the immunosuppressive mechanisms developed by the tumor. To enhance the vaccine-induced immune response and the treatment efficacy, DNA vaccines could be improved by using two different strategies. The first is to increase their immunogenicity by selecting and optimizing the best antigen(s) to be inserted into the plasmid DNA. The second strategy is to combine DNA vaccines with other complementary therapies that could improve their activity by attenuating immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment or by increasing the activity/number of immune cells. A growing number of preclinical and clinical studies are adopting these two strategies to better exploit the potential of DNA vaccination. In this review, we analyze the last 5-year preclinical studies and 10-year clinical trials using plasmid DNA vaccines for cancer therapy. We also investigate the strategies that are being developed to overcome the limitations in cancer DNA vaccination, revisiting the rationale for different combinations of therapy and the different possibilities in antigen choice. Finally, we highlight the most promising developments and critical points that need to be addressed to move towards the approval of therapeutic cancer DNA vaccines as part of the standard of cancer care in the future.

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The growing number of clinical trials and the results already available underline the strong potential of DNA electroporation which combines both safety and efficiency. Nevertheless, it remains critical to further increase fundamental knowledge to refine future strategies, to develop concerted and common DNA electroporation protocols and to continue exploring new electroporation-based therapeutic options.

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DNA vaccine can be modified to increase protein production and modulate immune response. To enhance the efficiency of a P815 mastocytoma DNA vaccine, the P1A gene sequence was optimized by substituting specific codons with synonymous ones while modulating the number of CpG motifs. The P815A murine antigen production was increased with codon-optimized plasmids. The number of CpG motifs within the P1A gene sequence modulated the immunogenicity by inducing a local increase in the cytokines involved in innate immunity. After prophylactic immunization with the optimized vaccines, tumor growth was significantly delayed and mice survival was improved. Consistently, a more pronounced intratumoral recruitment of CD8+ T cells and a memory response were observed. Therapeutic vaccination was able to delay tumor growth when the codon-optimized DNA vaccine containing the highest number of CpG motifs was used. Our data demonstrate the therapeutic potential of optimized P1A vaccine against P815 mastocytoma, and they show the dual role played by codon optimization on both protein production and innate immune activation.

DNA vaccination against cancer has become a promising strategy for inducing a specific and long-lasting antitumor immunity. However, DNA vaccines fail to generate potent immune responses when used as a single therapy. To enhance their activity into the tumor, a DNA vaccine against murine P815 mastocytoma was combined with antibodies directed against the immune checkpoints CTLA4 and PD1. The combination of these two strategies delayed tumor growth and enhanced specific antitumor immune cell infiltration in comparison to the corresponding single therapies. The combination also promoted IFNg, IL12 and granzyme B production in the tumor microenvironment and decreased the formation of liver metastasis in a very early phase of tumor development, enabling 90% survival. These results underline the complementarity of DNA vaccination and immune checkpoint blockers in inducing a potent immune response, by exploiting the generation of antigen-specific T cells by the vaccine and the ability of immune checkpoint blockers to enhance T cell activity and infiltration in the tumor. These findings suggest how and why a rational combination therapy can overcome the limits of DNA vaccination but could also allow responses to immune checkpoint blockers in a larger proportion of subjects.

We aimed to explore whether the combination of intradermal DNA vaccination, to boost immune response against melanoma antigens, and immune checkpoint blockade, to alleviate immunosuppression, improves antitumor effectiveness in a murine B16F10 melanoma tumor model. Compared to single treatments, a combination of intradermal DNA vaccination (ovalbumin or gp100 plasmid adjuvanted with IL12 plasmid) and immune checkpoint CTLA-4/PD-1 blockade resulted in a significant delay in tumor growth and prolonged survival of treated mice. Strong activation of the immune response induced by combined treatment resulted in a significant antigen-specific immune response, with elevated production of antigen-specific IgG antibodies and increased intratumoral CD8 + infiltration. These results indicate a potential application of the combined DNA vaccination and immune checkpoint blockade, specifically, to enhance the efficacy of DNA vaccines and to overcome the resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors in certain cancer types.

BackgroundStrategies to increase nucleic acid vaccine immunogenicity are needed to move towards clinical applications in oncology. In this study, we designed a new generation of DNA vaccines, encoding an engineered vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein as a carrier of foreign T cell tumor epitopes (plasmid to deliver T cell epitopes, pTOP). We hypothesized that pTOP could activate a more potent response compared with the traditional DNA-based immunotherapies, due to both the innate immune properties of the viral protein and the specific induction of CD4 and CD8 T cells targeting tumor antigens. This could improve the outcome in different tumor models, especially when the DNA-based immunotherapy is combined with a rational therapeutic strategy.MethodsThe ability of pTOP DNA vaccine to activate a specific CD4 and CD8 response and the antitumor efficacy were tested in a B16F10-OVA melanoma (subcutaneous model) and GL261 glioblastoma (subcutaneous and orthotopic models).ResultsIn B16F10-OVA melanoma, pTOP promoted immune recognition by adequate processing of both MHC-I and MHC-II epitopes and had a higher antigen-specific cytotoxic T cell (CTL) killing activity. In a GL261 orthotopic glioblastoma, pTOP immunization prior to tumor debulking resulted in 78% durable remission and long-term survival and induced a decrease of the number of immunosuppressive cells and an increase of immunologically active CTLs in the brain. The combination of pTOP with immune checkpoint blockade or with tumor resection improved the survival of mice bearing, a subcutaneous melanoma or an orthotopic glioblastoma, respectively.ConclusionsIn this work, we showed that pTOP plasmids encoding an engineered vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein, and containing various foreign T cell tumor epitopes, successfully triggered innate immunity and effectively promoted immune recognition by adequate processing of both MHC-I and MHC-II epitopes. These results highlight the potential of DNA-based immunotherapies coding for viral proteins to induce potent and specific antitumor responses.