Cancer vaccines generated by photodynamic therapy

Abstract

The development of photodynamic therapy (PDT)-generated cancer vaccines is potentially one of the most significant achievements in the field of PDT. Employing vaccine protocols optimizes the capacity of PDT of inducing a strong immune response against treated tumor due to the establishment of highly favourable conditions for maximizing the avidity of the immune reaction while sustaining and prolonging its tumor-destroying attack. While the introduction of PDT vaccines into the clinics and testing on patients is still in a very early phase, much work can still be done on further improvement of the potency of PDT vaccines. Considerable advances can be expected by identifying the most effective adjuvants to be used with PDT vaccines, which will most likely be different with different types of cancerous lesions.