Vaccination for prevention of infectious diseases provides one of the most valuable and cost-effective clinical interventions. Despite recent progress in personalized cancer vaccines targeting patient specific tumor neoantigens, a breakthrough is urgently needed to make these technologies applicable to a broad spectrum of cancers. 

We are challenging this unmet technical gap from a new concept designed to bypass the use of mRNAs for targeting individual cancer specific antigens. Based on a technology able to selectively introduce a target antigen into cancer cells, we are developing a small molecule-based cancer vaccine strategy. This approach holds a great potential to create a universal vaccine applicable to a broad spectrum of cancers. 

Successful development of the totally small molecule-based, broadly applicable cancer vaccine should have a major impact on cancer therapy, providing an effective and low-cost treatment option beneficial to a large number of patients. 

Numerous experimental cancer vaccines targeting cancer cells carrying foreign model antigens/haptens including OVA (ovalbumin), LacZ (β-galactosidase), KatushkaS158A (tfRFP), and dinitrophenyl (DNP) are known to enhance anticancer immunity (complete rejection in some cases) via the antigen-specific immune response. However, these approaches have never been applied to the clinic due to the lack of ways to selectively introduce given antigens into cancer cells in the body. 

Our candidate :P would address this technical gap being able to selectively introduce a target antigen into cancer cells. Based on this technology, we can create a novel vaccine strategy to utilize the body’s own immunity to fight against cancer. This could be done by simply vaccinating with a small molecule to prime antigen-specific immunity followed by the systemic :P treatment to selectively load the target antigen into cancer cells (Vac & Load). It is anticipated that this approach can engage the body’s innate and adaptive immune responses leading to the potent and durable anticancer effect.