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Therapeutic vaccines are currently at the forefront of medical innovation. Various endeavors have been made to develop more consolidated approaches to producing nucleic acid-based vaccines, both DNA and mRNA vaccines. These innovations have continued to propel therapeutic platforms forward, especially for mRNA vaccines, after the successes that drove emergency FDA approval of two mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. These vaccines use modified mRNAs and lipid nanoparticles to improve stability, antigen translation, and delivery by evading innate immune activation. Simple alterations of mRNA structure- such as non-replicating, modified, or self-amplifying mRNAs- can provide flexibility for future vaccine development. For protein vaccines, the use of long synthetic peptides of tumor antigens instead of short peptides has further enhanced antigen delivery success and peptide stability. Efforts to identify and target neoantigens instead of antigens shared between tumor cells and normal cells have also improved protein-based vaccines. Other approaches use inactivated patient-derived tumor cells to elicit immune responses, or purified tumor antigens are given to patient-derived dendritic cells that are activated in vitro prior to reinjection. This review will discuss recent developments in therapeutic cancer vaccines such as, mode of action and engineering new types of anticancer vaccines, in order to summarize the latest preclinical and clinical data for further discussion of ongoing clinical endeavors in the field.

Nucleopeptides are a class of molecules with numerous applications in the field of therapy, diagnostics and biomaterials development. Despite their nucleobase-decorated nature, their binding to natural nucleic acid targets does not necessarily involve all nucleopeptide bases, as we showed in this study. Here, we present a CD study on the interaction of a dithymine-functionalized tetra-L-serine with a homoadenine DNA (dA12) reporting an interpretation of the experimental data in light of our computational studies based on molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD), as well as computer-assisted CD interpretation and simulation of the predicted complex structure. The stoichiometry of the complex, emerged by CD titration, accounted for a 1:2 T:A ratio. Hence, we supposed that binding did not involve a full pairing of the complementary bases but a partial thymines engagement. This hypothesis was sustained by the docking and MD simulations performed on the selected ligand and the complementary target of DNA and RNA, used for comparison. The nucleopeptide bound the DNA through a single A-T recognition involving complementary base-pairing, as well as by some interactions between its backbone (and in particular L-serine OH) and the nucleic acid. Overall, this confirmed that nucleopeptides can interact with nucleic acids leaving some of their nucleobases free for establishing further interactions with other biomolecules or for crosslinking in supramolecular structures in aqueous solution. Nevertheless, even though no typical DNA secondary structure is formed after nucleopeptide-binding, this ligand is able to induce a higher degree of structuration in the random deoxyoligonucleotide target as evidenced by CD, MD and CD simulation.

Cyclic adenosine diphosphate ribose (cADPR) is a second messenger involved in the Ca2+ homeostasis. Its chemical instability prompted researchers to tune point by point its structure, obtaining stable analogues featuring interesting biological properties. One of the most challenging derivatives is the cyclic inosine diphosphate ribose (cIDPR), in which the hypoxanthine isosterically replaces the adenine. As our research focuses on the synthesis of N1 substituted inosines, in the last few years we have produced new flexible cIDPR analogues, where the northern ribose has been replaced by alkyl chains. Interestingly, some of them mobilized Ca2+ ions in PC12 cells. To extend our SAR studies, herein we report on the synthesis of a new stable cIDPR derivative which contains the 2″S,3″R dihydroxypentyl chain instead of the northern ribose. Interestingly, the new cyclic derivative and its open precursor induced an increase in intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) with the same efficacy of the endogenous cADPR in rat primary cortical neurons.

Worldwide, gastric cancer represents the fifth most common cancer and the third leading cause of cancer deaths. Although the overall 5-year survival for resectable disease was more than 70% in Japan due to the implementation of screening programs resulting in detection of disease at earlier stages, in Western countries more than two thirds of gastric cancers are usually diagnosed in advanced stages reporting a 5-year survival rate of only 25.7%. Anyway surgical resection with extended lymph node dissection remains the only curative therapy for non-metastatic advanced gastric cancer, while neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapies can improve the outcomes aimed at the reduction of recurrence and extension of survival. High-quality research and advances in technologies have contributed to well define the oncological outcomes and have stimulated many clinical studies testing multimodality managements in the advanced disease setting. This review article aims to outline and discuss open issues in current surgical management of advanced gastric cancer.