{"entity":{"id":"in-situ-vaccination","kind":"technology","name":"In situ vaccination","aka":[],"tldr":"Treating one tumour so aggressively that the immune system learns to attack every other one, using the tumour itself as the vaccine.","summary":"Rather than manufacturing a vaccine, an injected adjuvant, virus, cytokine or ablative therapy turns a single lesion into an antigen source. Intratumoural TLR9 agonists with low-dose radiotherapy produced systemic responses in lymphoma, and oncolytic viruses, cryoablation, histotripsy and IL-12 electroporation all pursue the same idea. Systemic responses are real but modest and inconsistent, and the field lacks a way to predict who will respond.","status":"phase-2","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"ClinicalTrials.gov: in situ vaccination cancer","url":"https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?term=in%20situ%20vaccination%20cancer"}],"tags":["frontier","promising"],"related":[],"cancers":["melanoma","dlbcl"],"sections":["immunotherapy"],"technologies":["oncolytic-virus","sting-agonist","sbrt","hifu-histotripsy","cytokine-therapy","thermal-ablation"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["abscopal-effect","immunogenic-cell-death"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"principle":"Local immunogenic cell death plus an adjuvant recruits antigen-presenting cells at the tumour, priming T cells against the patient's own full antigen repertoire.","strengths":["No manufacturing or antigen prediction needed","Covers the whole private antigen repertoire","Cheap and fast"],"limitations":["Abscopal responses are inconsistent","Needs an injectable lesion","No validated predictive biomarker"]},"route":"/technologies/in-situ-vaccination/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"dlbcl","kind":"cancer","name":"Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma","route":"/cancers/dlbcl/"},{"id":"melanoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Melanoma","route":"/cancers/melanoma/"}],"section":[{"id":"immunotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Immunotherapy","route":"/fronts/immunotherapy/"}],"technology":[{"id":"cytokine-therapy","kind":"technology","name":"Cytokines & engineered cytokines","route":"/technologies/cytokine-therapy/"},{"id":"hifu-histotripsy","kind":"technology","name":"Focused ultrasound & histotripsy","route":"/technologies/hifu-histotripsy/"},{"id":"oncolytic-virus","kind":"technology","name":"Oncolytic viruses","route":"/technologies/oncolytic-virus/"},{"id":"sbrt","kind":"technology","name":"SBRT / SABR (stereotactic radiotherapy)","route":"/technologies/sbrt/"},{"id":"sting-agonist","kind":"technology","name":"STING & innate immune agonists","route":"/technologies/sting-agonist/"},{"id":"thermal-ablation","kind":"technology","name":"Thermal ablation (RFA, microwave, cryo)","route":"/technologies/thermal-ablation/"}],"term":[{"id":"abscopal-effect","kind":"term","name":"Abscopal effect","route":"/terms/abscopal-effect/"},{"id":"immunogenic-cell-death","kind":"term","name":"Immunogenic cell death","route":"/terms/immunogenic-cell-death/"}],"roadmap":[{"id":"cure-paths","kind":"roadmap","name":"Paths to cures: interception, eradication, control","route":"/roadmaps/cure-paths/"},{"id":"frontier-2035","kind":"roadmap","name":"Radical oncology: what could change the war by 2035","route":"/roadmaps/frontier-2035/"}],"pathway":[{"id":"immune-desert-exclusion","kind":"pathway","name":"Cold tumours: immune deserts and exclusion","route":"/pathways/immune-desert-exclusion/"}],"company":[{"id":"idera-pharmaceuticals","kind":"company","name":"Idera Pharmaceuticals","route":"/companies/idera-pharmaceuticals/"}]}}