# Integrated Discovery Pipeline for Tumor Neoantigens

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2020 · $541,899

## Abstract

Project Summary
Cancer immunotherapy is now established as a major therapeutic modality. Significant progress with
checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies demonstrates durable tumor regression in metastatic melanoma,
lung cancer and other malignancies. One conspicuous limitation is the paucity of validated tumor antigens,
which impedes clinical investigators in their pursuit of developing new cancer immunotherapies. Tumor
encoded non-synonymous mutations may provide a new source of potential target antigens. T cells recognize
tumor missense mutations as amino acid substituted peptides presented in the context of major
histocompatibility molecules on the cancer cell surface, thus implicating missense mutations as a source of
patient-specific neoantigens. We recently described the first-in-human study to use next generation
sequencing technologies to identify and validate tumor missense mutations as neoantigens. Our study
demonstrates that vaccination increases the breadth and diversity of neoantigen-specific T cells resulting in a
broad repertoire of effector CD8+ T cells that uniquely discriminates mutated antigens from wild type peptides
ensuring tumor specificity. This proposal aims to find a unique solution to the scarcity of tumor antigens by
developing a neoantigen discovery pipeline that integrates genomic and proteomic technologies. In this
proposal, a unique academic-industry partnership comprised of an established team of experts, in cancer
genomics, cancer proteomics, human immunology, and clinical oncology, aim to solve the challenging problem
of tumor neoantigen discovery. The long-term goal is to develop a robust pipeline using cutting-edge
technologies merged with machine learning algorithms to supply tumor neoantigens for clinical investigation.
The goal of this proposal will be addressed in the experiments of the following specific aims: 1) to identify the
repertoire of melanoma expressed somatic mutations by next generation sequencing technologies; 2) to
develop a novel proteomics platform to identify melanoma neoantigens presented by HLA class I molecules; 3)
to validate neoantigen identification in a vaccination protocol.
The proposed pipeline will deliver a transformative solution for tumor antigen identification, should be
translatable to other “immune responsive“ malignancies and enable the nascent discipline of precision
medicine to provide effective and safe immunotherapies for cancer patients.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10000066
- **Project number:** 5R01CA204261-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Beatriz M. Carreno
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $541,899
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-08 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10000066

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10000066, Integrated Discovery Pipeline for Tumor Neoantigens (5R01CA204261-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-08 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10000066. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*