Proximity-guided graph learning reveals tumour-associated proximity antigens

The spatial organization of membrane proteins is an underexplored dimension of cell surface biology1,2. Spatial proximity shapes cellular function and therapeutic targetability2,3, yet efforts to identify tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) have largely focused on expression alone4. Here, we developed an industrialized surface protein proximity-mapping workflow to interrogate TAAs within their membrane microenvironments. Using this workflow, we generated 248 proximity maps across 12 receptor tyrosine kinases and 28 tumour cell systems. The resulting atlas enabled the development of MetaMap, a correlation-based analytical framework that defines spatial protein communities and infers conserved proximity relationships among non-targeted proteins, and establishes the concept of tumour-associated proximity antigens (TAPAs), a class of co-targets defined by disease-specific spatial proximity to TAAs rather than expression alone. Integrating these proximity-derived relationships within a multimodal prioritization framework, we identified and validated EGFR–CDCP1 as a TAA–TAPA pair that enhances tumour cell killing across therapeutic modalities. Together, this work advances disease-associated membrane proximity as a guiding principle for the design of precision multispecific therapeutics. A proximity-mapping atlas defines tumour-associated proximity antigens, revealing disease-associated membrane spatial communities, and identifies EGFR–CDCP1 as a co-target pair that enhances tumour killing by multispecific therapeutics.

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Publication Details

Journal
Nature
Published
2026-09-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11003-7
Primary Topic
vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches
Type
article
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article

Proximity-guided graph learning reveals tumour-associated proximity antigens

Clare F. Malone, Heath E. Klock, Marc A. Gavin, Robert Gene et al.
Nature
vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches
article

Proximity-guided graph learning reveals tumour-associated proximity antigens

Clare F. Malone, Heath E. Klock, Marc A. Gavin, Robert Gene, Kendall Johnson, Olugbeminiyi Fadeyi, Rebecca Howell, Brian Woodruff, Ben Setter, Payam E. Farahani, Scott A. Lesley, Rob Oslund, Jason Misurelli, Francesca Nardi, Lydia Vignale, Cody Scandore, Hengyu Xu, Carol L. Farr, Ertan Eryilmaz, Hayley Ma, Mikaela Rusnak, Tali Vittum, Zach Caldwell, Anna K. de Regt, Quynh Ton, Jeff Guernsey, Christopher K. May, Sophia Romero, Julia Swanson, Noah Dephoure, Emma Dawson, Tsadik Habtetsion, Pamela M. Holland, Martin Mathay, Michael Hornsby
article en

Abstract

The spatial organization of membrane proteins is an underexplored dimension of cell surface biology1,2. Spatial proximity shapes cellular function and therapeutic targetability2,3, yet efforts to identify tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) have largely focused on expression alone4. Here, we developed an industrialized surface protein proximity-mapping workflow to interrogate TAAs within their membrane microenvironments. Using this workflow, we generated 248 proximity maps across 12 receptor tyrosine kinases and 28 tumour cell systems. The resulting atlas enabled the development of MetaMap, a correlation-based analytical framework that defines spatial protein communities and infers conserved proximity relationships among non-targeted proteins, and establishes the concept of tumour-associated proximity antigens (TAPAs), a class of co-targets defined by disease-specific spatial proximity to TAAs rather than expression alone. Integrating these proximity-derived relationships within a multimodal prioritization framework, we identified and validated EGFR–CDCP1 as a TAA–TAPA pair that enhances tumour cell killing across therapeutic modalities. Together, this work advances disease-associated membrane proximity as a guiding principle for the design of precision multispecific therapeutics. A proximity-mapping atlas defines tumour-associated proximity antigens, revealing disease-associated membrane spatial communities, and identifies EGFR–CDCP1 as a co-target pair that enhances tumour killing by multispecific therapeutics.

Nature
Openalex Percentile: Top 18%
vaccines and immunoinformatics approaches
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