Uncovering Neo-antigens in Cancer Cells

Categories: “Cancer Therapeutics“

Reference #: 2017-002

OTC Contact: Ruchika Nijhara Ph.D., MBA (Directory Information | Send a Message)

Description

A new method that discovers pathologically spliced mRNAs found in cancer cells and then identifies the candidate neoantigen peptides. The concept is that new splice junctions generated in the pathologically spliced mRNAs code for fusion proteins that will appear as neoantigens to the immune system.

Current methods can only identify neo-antigens that are generated by mutations in protein coding sequences and totally ignore an important alternative mechanism that generate new antigens in cancers, i.e protein sequences that are new to the immune system. The posttranslational editing of primary RNA that includes pathologic alternative splicing. Malignant progression generates alternatively spliced transcripts not present in normal tissues.

Applications

• Cancer therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors
• Cancer Diagnostics
• Predict mutational load and immune checkpoint inhibitors response
• Selection of patients for immune checkpoint inhibitor sensitivity and/or resistance

Advantages

• Can uncover novel transcript variants and/or isoforms
• Predict peptide fragments and open reading frames

Stage of Development

The approach is tested with human bone marrow cell subpopulations and now being applied to melanoma samples for neoantigen discovery and analysis.

Relevant Publications

No references or resources available.

Patent Status

Provisional patent application has been filed.