RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Cancer Epitope Trees of 23 Early Cervical Cancers in Chinese Women
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 043927
DO 10.1101/043927
A1 Li, Xia
A1 Huang, Hailiang
A1 Guang, Yanfang
A1 Gong, Yuhua
A1 He, Chen-Yi
A1 Yi, Xin
A1 Qi, Ming
A1 Chen, Zhi-Ying
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/16/043927.abstract
AB Emerging evidences suggest the heterogeneity of cancers limits the efficacy of immunotherapy. To search for optimal therapeutic targets, we used whole-exome sequencing data from 23 early cervical tumors from Chinese women to investigate the hierarchical structure of the somatic mutations and the predicted neo-epitopes based on their strong binding with major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. We found each tumor carried 117 mutations and 61 neo-epitopes in average and displayed a unique phylogenic tree and “cancer neo-epitope tree” comprising different compositions of mutations or neo-epitopes. Conceivably, the neo-epitopes at the top of the tree shared by all cancer cells are the optimal therapeutic targets that might lead to a cure. Human papillomavirus can be used as therapeutic target in only a proportion of cases where the integrated genome exits without active infection. Therefore, the “cancer neo-epitope tree” will serve as an important source to determine of the optimal immunotherapeutic target.