title: Neoepitopes as cancer immunotherapy targets: key challenges and opportunities.
abstract: Over the last half century, it has become well established that cancers can elicit a host immune response that can target them with high specificity. Only within the last decade, with the advances in high-throughput gene sequencing and bioinformatics approaches, are we now on the forefront of harnessing the host's immune system to treat cancer. Recently, some strides have been taken toward understanding effective tumor-specific MHC I restricted epitopes or neoepitopes. However, many fundamental questions still remain to be addressed before this therapy can live up to its full clinical potential. In this review, we discuss the major hurdles that lie ahead and the work being done to address them.
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, & Carole & Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-1601, USA.
authors.forename: Cory A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Brennick
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, & Carole & Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-1601, USA.
authors.forename: Mariam M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, & Carole & Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-1601, USA.
authors.forename: William L
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Corwin
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, & Carole & Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-1601, USA.
authors.forename: Pramod K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, & Carole & Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, CT 06030-1601, USA.
authors.forename: Hakimeh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ebrahimi-Nik
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017951:Antigen Presentation; D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*; D019496:Cancer Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000639:trends*; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D016056:Immunodominant Epitopes / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology / Q000628:therapy*; D013602:T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm; D019496:Cancer Vaccines; D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I; D016056:Immunodominant Epitopes
keywords: binding affinity; cancer Immunotherapy; checkpoint blockade; neoepitope; vaccine