RNAseq for B16-OVA and 4T1 murine cancer cell lines
RNA Sequencing of the murine breast cancer cell line 4T1 and of the murine melanoma cell line B16-ova was carried out with the aim of establishing the complete transcriptome of these cell lines. Because these are cancer cells and we expect a lot of aberrant splicing, we carried out de novo assembly (genome guided) of the transcripts. We also ran deep Mass Spectrometry proteomics analysis on the same cell lines, aiming to determine which aberrant transcripts carry over to the protein expression level. Further, we tested these cancer specific protein epitopes (putative neoantigens) for immunogenicity using mouse models. Finally, the putative neoantigens that showed good immunogenic potential were used in tumor growth control experiments with mice engrafted with the two tumor cell lines. In these experiments we tested whether cancer vaccines based on individual neoantigen peptides (MHC-I) restricted the growth of the tumor compared to adequate controls. The overall aim of the project is to validate the ability of our multi-omics/bioinformatics pipeline to identify and deliver neoantigens that can be used to suppress tumor growth.