Assessment of Functional Status of Human Leukocyte Antigen Class I Genes in Cancer Tissues in the Context of Personalized Neoantigen Peptide Vaccine Immunotherapy

The results indicate that HLA class I genes may get affected by somatic changes in cancer tissue, and assessment of the somatic status of the HLA genotype should be performed in the cancer tissues. The results provide robust rational for removal of mutated or lost HLAs from the personalized neoantigen peptide prediction pipeline to potentially increase the efficacy of the PNPVT. Further functional studies are needed to assess the impact of HLA gene mutations/loss on PNPVT outcomes.