Immune monitoring of T-cell responses in cancer vaccine development

Monitoring cellular immune responses is one prerequisite for rational development of cancer vaccines. The primary objective of immune monitoring is to determine the efficacy of a vaccine to induce or augment a specific T-cell response. Further questions relate to the prevalence and functional relevance of spontaneous tumor-directed immune responses, the functional characteristics of T-cell responses, and, finally and most importantly, the relationship between immune monitoring assay results and clinical end points. The issue of T-cell monitoring has become more complex as different types and generations of assays have been adopted during the past decade and both standardization and validation of assays have often been insufficient. Because the development of assays parallel the clinical development of cancer vaccines, technical advances have been achieved simultaneously with broadening understanding of cancer immunity. Suitable animal models for immune monitoring are, however, lacking, because preclinical vaccine development in rodents does not allow serial immune monitoring of the peripheral blood, as is commonly used in patients. The current situation is characterized by a lack of universal standards for T-cell assessment, uncertainty about the association between immune monitoring assay results and clinical antitumor end points, and lack of knowledge regarding the contribution of different aspects of T-cell function to clinical efficacy. It is acknowledged that T-cell monitoring will have to be validated in large trials with clinically effective vaccines, but this necessity should not discourage the current application of novel assays within clinical trials of all stages.