Prehn, Richmond T.2010-05-062010-05-062005On the nature of cancer and why anticancer vaccines don't work. Cancer Cell International. 2005;5(1):25.10.1186/1475-2867-5-25http://www.cancerci.com/content/5/1/25http://hdl.handle.net/1773/15823In this essay I suggest that the major difficulty in producing effective anti-cancer vaccines lies in the fact that most cancers have little immunogenicity because of a basic paucity of tumor-specific antigenicity. The lack of antigenicity, despite extensive genomic instability, could be explained if most tumor mutations occur in silenced genes. A further problem is that an immune reaction against tumor antigens, especially in moderate or low amount, may be stimulatory rather than inhibitory to tumor growth.en-USArticle