Quantitating therapeutically relevant T-cell responses to cancer vaccines

Successful application of active immunotherapy to the treatment of cancer will require stimulation of potent antigen-specific T-cell responses. It is not known how numerous or how potent these T cells must be in order to abrogate tumors, but the levels of immunity needed to control chronic viral infections may provide estimates for comparison. Evaluation of the efficacy of a vaccine strategy in attaining these levels of immunity will depend on the use of assays that create a picture of T-cell number and function that correlates with clinical outcomes. We discuss the currently available in vivo and in vitro T-cell assays and their relevance for detecting therapeutic levels of T-cell activity. We also propose a strategy for efficiently evaluating the immunologic efficacy of cancer vaccines so that the most promising candidates can be brought more rapidly into definitive clinical trials.