The Cancer Epitope Trees of 23 Early Cervical Cancers in Chinese Women

Emerging evidences suggest the heterogeneity of cancers limits the efficacy of immunotherapy. To search for optimal therapeutic targets, we used whole-exome sequencing data from 23 early cervical tumors from Chinese women to investigate the hierarchical structure of the somatic mutations and the predicted neo-epitopes based on their strong binding with major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. We found each tumor carried 117 mutations and 61 neo-epitopes in average and displayed a unique phylogenic tree and “cancer neo-epitope tree” comprising different compositions of mutations or neo-epitopes. Conceivably, the neo-epitopes at the top of the tree shared by all cancer cells are the peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/043927 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Mar. 16, 2016;