Re-analysis of cancer vaccine patients with immune-related clinical response criteria (iRRC)

Anti-tumor responses induced by immunotherapy such as cancer vaccine are presumed to be mediated by induction of cancer-specific immune responses. Therefore, the immune-related response criteria (irRC) have been applied for cancer immunotherapies instead of the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST). Clinical responses of 91 patients enrolled in our cancer vaccine clinical studies were evaluated using RECIST. In this study, we re-analyzed their clinical responses using irRC. We identified 2 patients whose responses were evaluated as PD by RECIST, but as PR and SD by irRC, respectively. As these 2 patients showed relatively long survival rate, we concluded that irRC was suitable for the assessment of clinical outcomes in cancer immunotherapy.