@hyc @ned after Dr Jim Allison's research was more widely known it seems to have spurred some new angles to make these vaccines and they're not really the same for each targeted tumor type, but what I recall from his original research was:

for the the specific tumor he studied, he discovered something called CTLA-4. Basically when your own antibodies would attempt to attach and attack the tumor cells there was this CTLA-4 that would reach back out and touch the antibody and shut off the attack. So your own immune system could never successfully attack the tumor.

His vaccine introduced new antibodies that didn't have that vulnerability so your immune system could eradicate the tumor cells no matter where they were in your body.

Pretty neat stuff!

For my dog, his mouth tumor was shrinking and then out of nowhere it exploded in growth. It really needed to be paired with some other treatment to inhibit growth but this was during COVID and they wouldn't offer targeted radiation therapy because COVID lockdowns. Really too bad, I think he could have beat it. The alternative was cutting off half his lower jaw to get a good enough margin but that's insanely cruel and I don't know why people do that to their pets. His lymph nodes were clear, it really hadn't spread... and then boom, took over his whole body in a matter of weeks after seeing some really promising results.

RIP Oliver, you were a good doggo