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MHCing the tumour’s dark genome

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 23, page 140 (2023)Cite this article

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Immune recognition of tumours is primarily thought to be driven by the presentation of tumour neoantigens — peptides derived from nonsynonymous mutations in protein-coding regions — on MHC class I molecules, which are often specific (‘private’) to an individual tumour. By contrast, other types of antigen, such as cancer germline antigens (CGAs) and melanoma-associated antigens, are shared across tumours and therefore have been leveraged as vaccine targets. However, the potential repertoire of MHC class I-bound peptides extends beyond the 2% of the genome that is known to code for functional proteins; translated products of cryptic open-reading frames, namely introns, non-coding RNA, untranslated regions (UTRs), off-frame sequences and intergenic regions, can also be presented on MHC molecules.

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  1. Preprint Club, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Miriam Saffern & Robert Samstein

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  1. Miriam Saffern
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  2. Robert Samstein
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Correspondence to Miriam Saffern or Robert Samstein.

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Saffern, M., Samstein, R. MHCing the tumour’s dark genome. Nat Rev Immunol 23, 140 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-023-00839-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-023-00839-z

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