Heat shock protein-based cancer vaccines and related thoughts on immunogenicity of human tumors

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are associated in vivo with the entire repertoire of peptides (antigenic and otherwise) generated within that cell. Immunization with such non-covalent HSP-peptide complexes is unusually efficient in eliciting cellular immune responses against the antigenic peptides associated with the HSPs. This broad and general principle is the basis for a new generation of vaccines against cancers and infectious diseases and circumvents the need for identification of the T-cell epitopes for any given cancer or infectious agent.