Biocenter, Division for Bioinformatics, Innsbruck Medical University, Innrain 80, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria.
Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2015 Jan;64(1):99-104. doi: 10.1007/s00262-014-1599-7. Epub 2014 Aug 28.
Although cancer immunotherapy shows efficacy with adoptive T cell therapy (ACT) and antibody-based immune checkpoint blockade, efficacious therapeutic vaccination of cancer patients with tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) remains largely unmet. Current cancer vaccines utilize nonmutated shared TAAs that may have suboptimal immunogenicity. Experimental evidence underscores the strong immunogenicity of unique TAAs derived from somatically mutated cancer proteins, whose massive characterization has been precluded until recently by technical limitations. The development of cost-effective, high-throughput DNA sequencing approaches makes now possible the rapid identification of all the somatic mutations contained in a cancer cell genome. This method, combined with robust bioinformatics platforms for T cell epitope prediction and established reverse immunology approaches, provides us with an integrated strategy to identify patient-specific unique TAAs in a relatively short time, compatible with their potential use in the clinic. Hence, it is now for the first time possible to quantitatively define the patient's unique tumor antigenome and exploit it for vaccination, possibly in combination with ACT and/or immune checkpoint blockade to further increase immunotherapy efficacy.
虽然癌症免疫疗法在过继性 T 细胞疗法 (ACT) 和抗体免疫检查点阻断方面显示出疗效,但用肿瘤相关抗原 (TAA) 对癌症患者进行有效的治疗性疫苗接种仍未得到满足。目前的癌症疫苗利用非突变的共享 TAA,其免疫原性可能不理想。实验证据强调了源自体细胞突变癌症蛋白的独特 TAA 的强免疫原性,直到最近,由于技术限制,这些独特 TAA 的大规模特征才得以确定。具有成本效益的高通量 DNA 测序方法的发展使得现在可以快速识别癌细胞基因组中包含的所有体细胞突变。该方法与用于 T 细胞表位预测的强大生物信息学平台和已建立的反向免疫学方法相结合,为我们提供了一种在相对较短的时间内识别患者特异性独特 TAA 的综合策略,这与它们在临床上的潜在用途兼容。因此,现在可以首次定量定义患者的独特肿瘤抗原组,并利用其进行疫苗接种,可能与 ACT 和/或免疫检查点阻断相结合,以进一步提高免疫治疗效果。