Analysis of melanoma tumor antigens and immune subtypes for the development of mRNA vaccine

SummaryMelanoma has a high degree of malignancy and mortality. While there are some hopeful clinical trials for melanoma treatment in progress, they have not yet  to yield significant long-term cure rates. Cancer vaccines including mRNA are currently one of the most promising strategy for tumor immunotherapy. The aim of this study was to analyze the potential tumor antigens in melanoma that could be used to develop mRNA vaccines and identify suitable vaccin e populations. The gene expression data and complete clinical information of 471 melanoma samples and 1 normal tissue were retrieved from TCGA. Then, 812 samples of normal skin and their corresponding gene expression data were obtained from GTEx. Overexpressed genes, mutated genes and IRDEGs are use d to identify potential tumor antigens. The relationship between the expression level of potential antigen and prognosis was analyzed in GEPIA, and then the immune cell infiltration was estimated based on TIMER algorithm. The expression profiles of IRDEGs were used to identify consensus clusters and immune subtypes of melanoma. Finally, mutational status and immune microenvironment characterization in immune subtypes were analyzed. Five tumor antigens (PTPRC, SIGLEC10, CARD11, LILRB1, ADAMDEC1) were identified as potential tumor antigens according to overexpressed genes, mutated genes and immu ne-related genes. They were all associated with OS, DFS and APCs. We identified two immune subtypes of melanoma, named IS1 and IS2, whi...
Source: Investigational New Drugs - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research