Novel Neoantigen Detection from Complex Transcriptomic Structures in Pediatric Brain Tumors

Cancer is a leading cause of death for children and adolescents worldwide. Brain tumors are among the most common childhood cancers and one of the most difficult to treat. However, advances are being made across the field of cancer treatment, including in the identification of neoantigens as the future of personalized cancer vaccines. Neoantigens are targets that can be utilized by immunotherapy, a form of therapy that uses a patient’s own immune system to attack a tumor. Previous work has highlighted that neoantigens are also expected to be key markers for prediction of response to immune checkpoint blockers. These checkpoints help keep immune responses from being too strong and sometimes can keep the immune system from killing cancer cells, and checkpoint blockers are used to prevent this and strengthen immune response against cancers. For an enhanced prediction of neoantigens, researchers plan to integrate a new approach for fusion gene detection into the currently available toolkit for neoantigen detection. Researchers will carry out this research on the comprehensive data provided through the Pediatric Brain Tumor Atlas.