RNA vaccines in cancer treatment

The Cancer Report from the World Health Organization states that in the year 2000 12% of all death cases worldwide were caused by cancer. In the western world, the cancer death rates are often devastating, being at about 25%. This fact stresses the urgency to find effective cures against malignant diseases. New approaches in the treatment of cancer focus on the development of immunotherapies to fight the disease. Besides other methods, the usage of tumor-specific RNA as part of vaccines is investigated lately. RNA, administered alone or used for transfection of dendritic cells, shows several advantages as a vaccine including feasibility, applicability, safeness, and effectiveness when it comes to the generation of immune responses. This review concentrates on results from in vitro experiments and recent trials using RNA vaccines to present an overview about this specific strategy.