A systematic pan-cancer analysis of intratumoral microbiota-derived epitopes to inform cancer immunotherapy and prevention.

Microbial epitopes that mimic tumor antigens are mapped across 1190 intratumoral samples from 24 cancer types, showing distinct HLA binding patterns and cross-reactive immunogenicity.

• Why it matters: A pan-cancer view of molecularly mimicking microbial epitopes is missing, limiting how well immunotherapy and prevention strategies can target intratumoral microbial antigens.
• What they did: The study constructs a pan-cancer microbial epitope landscape from 1190 samples across 24 cancer types, analyzing HLA-I binding tendencies and comparing microbial versus human epitope properties.
• The result: Microbial epitopes show higher hydrophobicity, aliphatic indices, and stability; nine HLA-I alleles tend to bind them, and HLA-C presents more than HLA-A/B, enabling vaccine development and supporting enhanced immunogenicity and antitumor efficacy.