REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1648698
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines-Mechanisms and developmentView all 3 articles
Bladder Cancer Immunotherapy Parallel Advances in BCG Optimization and Next-Generation Vaccine Platforms
Provisionally accepted
- 1Other
- 2Weifang People's Hospital, Weifang, China
- 3Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Yantai, China
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Bladder cancer (BCa) remains a significant global health challenge with rising incidence and suboptimal outcomes in advanced stages. Although immunotherapy for urological cancers is not a new treatment, recent clinical advances have confirmed the value of immunotherapy as a urological cancer treatment. In the field of cancer immunotherapy, increasing attention has been focused on the use of cancer vaccines that activate T cells to target growing tumors. Despite Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) intravesical immunotherapy serving as the first-line treatment for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), its limitations, including systemic toxicity, BCG unresponsiveness, and rapid bladder clearance-necessitate novel therapeutic strategies. This descriptive review synthesizes recent advances in BCG optimization and emerging cancer vaccines for BCa, including peptides, antigen-presenting cells, viruses, or nucleic acids, that seeks to stimulate the patient's immune response targeting tumor cells. Our study underscores the transformative potential of next-generation vaccines in redefining BCa management while addressing critical barriers to implementation.
Keywords: Bladder cancer, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine, peptide-based vaccine, DC-based vaccine, Virus-based vaccine, RNA-based vaccine, DNA-based vaccine, Immunotherapy
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Wang, Gao and Cui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuan Gao, Weifang People's Hospital, Weifang, China
Yuanshan Cui, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital, Yantai, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.