Identification of immunologically protective neo-epitopes for the treatment of cancers

摘要

Described herein are methods of identifying immunologically protective neo-epitopes from the cancer tissue DNA of cancer patients using biophysical principles as well as bioinformatics techniques. The identification of immunologically protective neo-epitopes provides pharmaceutical compositions with a limited number of tumor-specific peptides suitable for personalized genomics-driven immunotherapy of human cancer. Specifically disclosed herein is a method of using the conformational stability of an epitope in an MHC protein -binding groove to predict immunogenicity of peptides in a putative neo-peptide set from a tumor from a cancer patient. Pharmaceutical compositions and methods of administration are also included.