A Novel Proteogenomic Integration Strategy Expands the Breadth of Neo-Epitope Sources

Simple Summary Tumor-specific antigens are ideal targets for cancer immunotherapy. Mass spectrometry, which is the main method that directly identifies neo-epitopes presented on tumor cells, focuses mainly on peptides derived from annotated protein-coding exomes. However, non-canonical peptides arising from alterations at genomic, transcriptional, and posttranslational levels have been identified in several pioneering studies, making it necessary to develop an integrated proteogenomic approach that can comprehensively identify neoantigens derived from all genomic regions. Our novel strategy combining database searches with a de novo peptide sequencing method accurately identified multiple types of non-canonical peptides in the colorectal cancer cell line, HCT116. This practical proteogenomic strategy can be applied to neoantigen discovery in clinical tumor samples, improving cancer immunotherapy. Tumor-specific antigens can activate T cell-based antitumor immune responses and are ideal targets for cancer immunotherapy. However, their identification is still challenging. Although mass spectrometry can directly identify human leukocyte antigen (HLA) binding peptides in tumor cells, it focuses on tumor-specific antigens derived from annotated protein-coding regions constituting only 1.5% of the genome. We developed a novel proteogenomic integration strategy to expand the breadth of tumor-specific epitopes derived from all genomic regions. Using the colorectal cancer cell line HCT116 as a model, we accurately identified 10,737 HLA-presented peptides, 1293 of which were non-canonical peptides that traditional database searches could not identify. Moreover, we found eight tumor neo-epitopes derived from somatic mutations, four of which were not previously reported. Our findings suggest that this new proteogenomic approach holds great promise for increasing the number of tumor-specific antigen candidates, potentially enlarging the tumor target pool and improving cancer immunotherapy.