Due to the intrinsic genetic instability of tumor cells, aberrant and novel tumor antigens can be expressed and serve as potential targets for cancer immunotherapy. This intrinsic feature can be exploited by cancer immunotherapy, particularly with cancer vaccination. Personalized cancer vaccination strategy can be a potent approach to trigger a broad-based antitumor response that is both beneficial and relevant to individual cancer patients. Also, cancer vaccination strategy can be designed to help elicit immunological memory for long-lasting tumor control. In this review, we describe the different types of personalized cancer vaccines and summarize the completed and ongoing cancer vaccination clinical trials in the last 10 years (database from www.clinicaltrials.gov). We also discuss the pros and cons of using different tumor animal models, i.e. syngeneic models, patient-derived xenografts models and genetically engineered mouse models, as tools for investigating cancer vaccination strategies. Finally, we describe preclinical studies that seek to test new emerging vaccination strategies as well as improving existing methods.