A novel neoantigen discovery approach based on chromatin high order conformation

High-throughput sequencing technology has yielded reliable and ultra-fast sequencing for DNA and RNA. For tumor cells of cancer patients, when combining the results of DNA and RNA sequencing, one can identify potential neoantigens that stimulate the immune response of the T cell. However, when the somatic mutations are abundant, it is computationally challenging to efficiently prioritize the identified neoantigen candidates according to their ability of activating the T cell immuno-response.

Numerous prioritization or prediction approaches have been proposed to address this issue but none of them considers the original DNA loci of the neoantigens from the perspective of 3D genome. Based on our previous discoveries, we propose to investigate the distribution of neoantigens with different immunogenicity abilities in 3D genome and propose to adopt this important information into neoantigen prediction.

We retrospect the DNA origins of the immuno-positive and immuno-negative neoantigens in the context of 3D genome and discovered that DNA loci of the immuno-positive neoantigens and immuno-negative neoantigens have very different distribution pattern. Specifically, comparing to the background 3D genome, DNA loci of the immuno-positive neoantigens tend to locate at specific regions in the 3D genome. We thus used this information into neoantigen prediction and demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach.

We believe that the 3D genome information will help to increase the precision of neoantigen prioritization and discovery and eventually benefit precision and personalized medicine in cancer immunotherapy.