[2] The production of vaccines tailored to match a person's individual constellation of cancer mutations has become a new field of research.
[citation needed] The development of sequencing technology has improved the accuracy of identification and localization of neoantigens.
With the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS), it has become possible to systematically predict cancer neoantigens for individual patients.
[5][13] In animal models, several independent studies have shown that vaccines consisting of computationally predicted neoepitopes mediated anti-tumor activity in mice.
Formats under consideration for individualized vaccines are synthetic peptides, messenger RNA, DNA plasmids, viral vectors, engineered bacteria, and antigen-loaded dendritic cells.
[21] Keskin et al. investigated individualized neoantigen vaccines in eight glioblastoma patients after surgical resection and conventional radiotherapy.
The study group observed that the vaccine increased the number of tumor-infiltrating T cells that migrated from the peripheral blood into the brain.
[citation needed] Tumor biopsies and healthy tissue (e.g., peripheral blood cells) of a patient diagnosed with cancer are examined by NGS.
Computational tools classify these mutations for the highest likelihood of immunogenicity, that is, for the predicted expression and binding affinity of neoepitopes on HLA molecules.
[4] The intended output is an on-demand vaccine with a unique composition tailored to the patient's individual cancer mutanome.
iNeST is based on the specific tumor mutations (neoantigens) of a single patient, with the aim of triggering high-affinity immune responses of T cells to the individual patient-specific cancer.