Immunotherapeutic peptide vaccination with leukemia-associated antigens.

Myeloid leukemias are good model diseases to develop and assess immunotherapeutic vaccine strategies because of the well-established potent anti-leukemia T cell immunity observed in chronic myeloid leukemia patients who received donor lymphocyte infusions following transplant relapse. Several leukemia-associated antigens (LAAs) have now been identified and validated for their potential clinical benefits from in vitro studies. The nature of some important LAAs, their efficacy in current preliminary clinical vaccination trials and some recent advances in fundamental tumor immunology give hope for improvement in future therapies. The results of these vaccine trials, although still preliminary, provide some evidence that vaccination with LAAs might confer protective immunity to leukemia and offer great prospect as part of the future treatment of leukemia.