Currently, a range of cancer vaccine strategies are being tested including those using peptides, DNA/RNA, viral vectors, tumor cells, pulsed dendritic cells etc. Cancer vaccines can activate, recover or power the immune system to kill and eliminate tumor cells by expressing specific cancer antigens. New cancer vaccines must be first studied in animals and then tested for safety and effectiveness in three phases of clinical trials. Cancer vaccines have shown promise in clinical trials with many types of cancer. There are a lot of vaccines which can initiate a powerful immune response in some patients, and are generally well tolerated. Although there are dozens of cancer vaccines in advanced clinical trials, yet only a few phase III studies have been completed. Because they have failed to meet the goals of safety and effectiveness, this makes cancer vaccines still in an experimental stage. A number of promising new cancer vaccines have entered clinical trials, and we eagerly await their findings. In this article we reviewed new advances in clinical trials and the perspective in clinical use of cancer vaccines.