The term cancer vaccine refers to a vaccine that either prevents infections with cancer-causing viruses, treats existing cancer or prevents the development of cancer in certain high risk individuals. (The ones that treat existing cancer are known as therapeutic cancer vaccines.) Some cancers, such as cervical cancer and some liver cancers, are caused by viruses, and traditional vaccines against those viruses, such as HPV vaccine and Hepatitis B vaccine, will prevent those cancers. (These anti-viral vaccines are not further discussed in the rest of this article). Scientists have also been trying to develop vaccines against existing cancers. But there is no such vaccine that can cure a person having cancer. Some researchers believe that cancer cells routinely arise and are destroyed by the healthy immune system; cancer forms when the immune system fails to destroy them. One approach to cancer vaccination is to separate proteins from cancer cells and immunize cancer patients against those proteins, in the hope of stimulating an immune reaction that would kill the cancer cells.

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