Therapeutic cancer vaccines are a new growth point of biomedicine with broad industrial prospects in the post-COVID-19 era. Many large international pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechnology companies are deploying different tumor therapeutic cancer vaccine projects, focusing on promoting their clinical transformation, and the vaccine industry has strong momentum for development. Such vaccines are also the core engine and pilot site for the development of new vaccine targets, new vectors, new adjuvants, and new technologies, which play a key role in promoting the innovation and development of vaccines. Various therapeutic cancer vaccines, such as viral vector vaccines, bacterial vector vaccines, cell vector vaccines, peptide vaccines, and nucleic acid vaccines, have all been applied in clinical research. With the continuous development of technology, therapeutic cancer vaccines are evolving towards the trends of precise antigens, efficient carriers, diversified adjuvants, and combined applications. For instance, the rapidly advancing mRNA-4157 vaccine is a typical representative that combines personalized antigens with efficient delivery vectors (lipid nanoparticles, LNPs), and it also shows synergistic advantages in melanoma patients treated in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors. In this article, we will systematically discuss the current research and development status and clinical research progress of various therapeutic cancer vaccines.

Vaccinology has undergone a profound paradigm shift—from traditional empirical discovery to a rational, engineering-based discipline. This transformation is driven by the synergistic and iterative cycle between computational (in silico) prediction and rigorous experimental validation, now the cornerstone of modern, accelerated vaccine development. This review delineates the architecture of this integrated pipeline. We first survey the expanding computational toolbox for vaccine design, spanning immunoinformatics and reverse vaccinology for antigen discovery, AI-driven structure-based engineering of stabilized immunogens, and systems vaccinology for modeling immune dynamics. We then outline the “experimental gauntlet”: a hierarchy of biochemical, cellular, and in vivo preclinical assays that verify computational hypotheses—confirming molecular structures, binding kinetics, immunogenicity, and protective efficacy. The power of this fusion is exemplified by landmark case studies: the structure-guided triumph against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), the rapid development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, the iterative germline-targeting design of HIV immunogens, and the frontier of personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines. Together, these advances demonstrate that the union of predictive computation and empirical validation has moved from promise to proven paradigm. Looking ahead, emerging technologies such as generative AI and immune digital twins are poised to further accelerate this virtuous cycle, transforming vaccinology into a more precise, predictable, and rapid science capable of meeting future global health challenges.

Therapeutic cancer vaccines is a new growth point of biomedicine with broad industrial prospects in the post-COVID-19 era. Many large international pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechnology companies are deploying different tumor therapeutic cancer vaccine projects, focusing on promoting their clinical transformation, and the vaccine industry has strong momentum for development. Such vaccines are also the core engine and pilot site for the development of new vaccine targets, new vectors, new adjuvants and new technologies, which play a key role in promoting the innovation and development of vaccines. The core technology of the mRNA novel coronavirus vaccine emerging under the new coronavirus epidemic is derived from mRNA therapeutic cancer vaccines. This review mainly systematically discusses the current research and development status and clinical research progress of various cancer treatment vaccines to reflect the development trends and challenges faced by tumor treatment vaccines.