Opportunity knocking: shared tumor-associated antigen vaccines against global cancer pandemic

Shared tumor-associated antigen (TAA) vaccines are the legacy of several generations of cancer immunologists who have labored to bring them to patients with cancer to improve their disease outcome and eventually use them to prevent cancer. TAA vaccines failed as monotherapy but the development of checkpoint inhibitors and other reagents that can modify immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, warrants their reassessment in combination immunotherapy trials. They now sit on shelves and in freezers of academic labs and pharmaceutical companies, but if shown effective in the new setting, could be quickly turned into broadly applicable, inexpensive, off-the-shelf vaccines. Shared TAA vaccines also provide a unique opportunity to address the global cancer pandemic by repurposing them for cancer prevention. The opportunity that shared TAA vaccines provide to help patients now and to protect millions globally from the agony of cancer diagnosis in the future, is either not fully recognized, recognized but ignored, or at best, being put on hold.