Core Framework & Diagram What Is Personalized Immunotherapy?

The essential difference is in the 'source of targets.' Ordinary vaccines (flu vaccines, HPV vaccines) target conserved antigens on pathogen or tumor virus surfaces — these antigens are the same on the same pathogen across different people, so one vaccine can be used for everyone. Individualized cancer vaccines target your tumor's unique neoantigens — these mutations almost never overlap between different patients, so must be individually designed and manufactured for each person. Ordinary vaccines are 'one-to-many'; individualized cancer vaccines are 'one-to-one.'

In healthy populations, there's no mature 'immunotherapy response potential' testing yet. Related tests (HLA genotype, TMB, MSI status) are primarily used for already-diagnosed cancer patients' treatment decisions, not healthy screening. For general health management, more practical individualized immune assessments include: NK cell activity testing (NKCA), peripheral blood immune cell subset analysis, inflammation marker combinations (hs-CRP, IL-6, TNF-α), and gut microbiome diversity analysis.

FMT to enhance 'healthy people's' immune function — currently no sufficient clinical evidence supports this, and it's not FMT's approved indication (currently FMT's approved indication is mainly recurrent C. difficile infection). FMT research in tumor immunotherapy is conducted in patients already having 'immunotherapy non-response,' belonging to exploratory research. For healthy people improving microbiome, the safest and most effective method remains: diverse diet (30+ plant foods per week), daily fermented foods, reducing ultra-processed foods, avoiding unnecessary antibiotics.

Very direct significance. HLA genotype distribution has significant differences between ethnicities — Asian populations (including Malaysian Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations) have markedly different HLA distributions from European populations, meaning neoantigen peptide MHC affinity predictions need to be based on Asian population HLA databases, not directly using European research parameters. Currently global major immunotherapy and neoantigen research is still predominantly based on Western Caucasian data — Asian population data is severely underrepresented. This is an important research gap and a direction where Asian medical research institutions (including Malaysian local immunogenomics research) have particularly valuable contributions to make.