Review Article

Sarcoma Immunotherapy: Past Approaches and Future Directions

Table 2

Vaccine studies in sarcoma.

VaccineSarcoma histologyNumber of patientsImmune responseResults

Irradiated autologous tumor cells [69]Various pediatric 16Not reported16.6 m versus 8.2 m survival (skin test responders)

Dendritic cell pulsed with autologous tumor lysate [70] Various pediatric10Not reportedOne response in patient with fibrosarcoma

Dendritic cell pulsed with peptides from tumor specific translocation breakpoints and E7 [71]Metastatic Ewing’s family of tumors or alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma30/52 initiated vaccine after standard therapy39% with immune response to translocation breakpoint
25% with E7-specific response
5-year OS: 31% for all patients versus 43% for patients initiating immunotherapy

105AD7 (CD55 target) [72]Osteosarcoma28 patients within 1–6 months of chemotherapy20/28 (71%) showed T cell proliferation response in vitro to 105AD7
9/28 (32%) weak antibody response to CD55
2 patients with possible clinical responses, alive and disease free 5.8 and 6.5 years from time of diagnosis

Dendritic vaccine pulsed with synthetic tumor specific peptide [73]Posttransplant, residual tumor (synovial, Ewing’s)5DTH response against tumor lysate in 1 patient 1 patient complete response, 77 months

Peptide encompassing SYT-SSX [74] Synovial6Peptide specific CTLs generated in 4 patientsSuppression of tumor progression 1 patient

SYT-SSX derived peptide [75]Synovial20 9 showed twofold increase in CTLs in tetramer analysis1/9 stable disease (received vaccine with peptide alone)
6/12 stable disease (received vaccine with incomplete Freund’s adjuvant)

Abbreviations: CTL.