Personalized Cancer Vaccine

T cell immunity directed against tumor encoded amino acid substitutions has been reported in humans with cancer, thus implicating missense mutations as a source of patient-specific neoantigens. Emerging data suggest that T cell responses directed at these private neoantigens, presented in the context of Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) cell surface molecules, are a major factor in the clinical activity of checkpoint inhibitors and adoptive T cell therapies. Recently, we demonstrated that vaccination against tumor missense mutations increases the antigenic breadth and clonal diversity of neoantigen-specific T cell immunity in patients with metastatic melanoma. In this presentation, I will discuss our pipeline for neoantigen identification and vaccination approach. Additionally, the effect of tumor heterogeneity in the neoantigen landscape as well as the characteristics of neoantigen T cell immunity elicited by vaccine will be presented.