Cancer is one of the most serious diseases affecting health and the second leading cause of death worldwide. Despite the development of various therapeutic modalities to deal with cancer, limited improvement in overall survival of patients has been yielded. Since there is no certain cure for cancer, detection of premalignant lesions, and prevention of their progression are vital to the decline of high morbidity and mortality of cancer. Among approaches to cancer prevention, immunoprevention has gained further attention in recent years. Deep understanding of the tumor/immune system interplay and successful prevention of virally-induced malignancies by vaccines have paved the way toward broadening cancer immunoprevention application. The identification of tumor antigens in premalignant lesions was the turning point in cancer immunoprevention that led to designing preventive vaccines for various malignancies including multiple myeloma, colorectal, and breast cancer. In addition to vaccines, immune checkpoint inhibitors are also being tested for the prevention of oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and imiquimod which is an established drug for the prevention of skin SCC, is a non-specific immunomodulator. Herein, to provide a bench-to-bedside understanding of cancer immunoprevention, we will review the role of the immune system in suppression and promotion of tumors, immunoprevention of virally-induced cancers, identification of tumor antigens in premalignant lesions, and clinical advances of cancer immunoprevention.

癌症是影响健康的最严重疾病之一，也是全球第二大死因。尽管开发了各种治疗癌症的方法，但对患者总体生存率的改善有限。由于癌症没有一定的治愈方法，因此检测癌前病变并预防其进展对于降低癌症的高发病率和死亡率至关重要。在癌症预防的方法中，免疫预防近年来得到了进一步的关注。对肿瘤/免疫系统相互作用的深入了解和疫苗对病毒诱导的恶性肿瘤的成功预防为扩大癌症免疫预防应用铺平了道路。癌前病变中肿瘤抗原的鉴定是癌症免疫预防的转折点，导致设计用于多种恶性肿瘤（包括多发性骨髓瘤、结直肠癌和乳腺癌）的预防性疫苗。除疫苗外，免疫检查点抑制剂也正在测试预防口腔鳞状细胞癌 (SCC)，咪喹莫特是一种用于预防皮肤 SCC 的成熟药物，是一种非特异性免疫调节剂。在此，为了提供对癌症免疫预防的全面了解，我们将回顾免疫系统在抑制和促进肿瘤、病毒诱导的癌症的免疫预防、癌前病变中肿瘤抗原的识别以及临床进展中的作用。癌症免疫预防。