ABOVE: TELLTALE TARGETS: T cells (one pictured above) can be trained to seek and destroy antigens specific to tumors.
MODIFIED FROM FLICKR, NIAID
The paper
C.M. Laumont et al., “Noncoding regions are the main source of targetable tumor-specific antigens,” Sci Transl Med, 10:eaau5516, 2019.
In pursuit of safe and effective cancer therapies, researchers have sought to identify antigens that are found on cancer cells but not on healthy cells. The quest for such tumor-specific antigens (TSAs) has largely focused on predicting mutated peptides from cancer cell genomes of individual patients.
This approach makes a research project out of each patient, says Claude Perreault, an immunologist at the University of Montreal. “I think you’re asking something that is impossible,” he adds. So Perreault and colleagues took a different tack. They used mass spectrometry to identify peptides on the surfaces of different types of cancer cells from mice and human patients. The search ...
