Camryn Neches, AB, AM
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Rhabdomyosarcoma is the most common soft-tissue sarcoma in children, accounting for 3% of pediatric cancers. As pediatric cancers are often driven by a strong oncogene or fusion protein, rather than a series of mutations, they are difficult to target with immunotherapy. This project searches for proteins that are characteristic of rhabdomyosarcoma in the ClinVar database, identifying both mutant proteins and fusions. Then, using NetMHCpan, we identify novel antigens capable of binding to these mutant proteins, finding over 100 neoantigens, many of which have strong binders. We then model these antigen-target pairs via ColabFold. Via ColabFold, we can identify what defines a strong binder, as well as conserved motifs. These preliminary results highlight rhabdomyosarcoma-specific epitopes and neoantigens for further investigation, with high potential clinical impact.
