The Bioinformatics of Neoantigen Discovery and Vaccine Design

Neoantigens are peptides derived from patient-specific and tumor-specific mutations, which can be recognized by the immune system and mediate tumor recognition that leads to immune destruction of the cancer. Neoantigens are emerging as one of the next generation immuno-oncology targets with tremendous potentials. Neoantigen can be identified by bioinformatics analyses of tumor DNA and RNA sequencing data include three steps. In this talk, I will introduce the definition, identification, prioritization of the neoantigens using tumor sequencing data. I’ll describe our REAL-neo analytic framework, including several novel modules implemented in the newest version of the pipeline.

Learning Objectives:

1. Introduce the background of neoantigens, and how neoantigens work against cancer.

2. Identify and validate neoantigens: the REAL-neo framework.

3. Explain the application of neoantigen vaccines: example of an individual patient investigational new drug (IND) trial.