Neoantigens are peptides deviating from a canonical protein sequence,
and arise from not only variable types of genomic mutations,
but also pseudogenes and aberrant splicing and translation.
These peptides provide a promising source for targeting
cancer cells through targeted re-activation of immune
cells. However, identifying neoantigens is a challenging
task due to their low abundance and cancer heterogeneity, and requires
exhaustive mass spectrometry (MS) proteomics and therewith compute.
In a previous project application, we successfully
implemented a Nextflow workflow to perform proteogenomics
analysis for identifying neoantigens on several cancer
cohorts using MS. Results from those analyses are to be published,
and we are currently pursuing three objectives:
- Scaling up our workflow to be able to use in more experiments,
especially with larger amounts of samples
- Extending the workflow to be able to find neoantigens deriving
from more mutation types, e.g. gene fusions
- Leveraging new MS technology (DIA, PRM) to quickly identify confirmed
neoantigens in new samples, requiring less instrument and compute time.
As implemented earlier, batches of neoantigens will be analyzed
in a cross-check Nextflow pipeline, searching for their expression
in healthy tissue public data. This step is to validate there is
no unexpected expression in healthy tissue which would render the
neoantigen useless as either a cancer marker or target, and also
requires exhaustive analysis.