The interplay between neoantigens and immune cells in sarcomas treated with checkpoint inhibition.

Introduction: Sarcomas are comprised of diverse bone and connective tissue tumors with few effective therapeutic options for locally advanced unresectable and/or metastatic disease. Recent advances in immunotherapy, in particular immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI), have shown promising outcomes in several cancer indications. Unfortunately, ICI therapy has provided only modest clinical responses and seems moderately effective in a subset of the diverse subtypes. Methods: To explore the immune parameters governing ICI therapy resistance or immune escape, we performed whole exome sequencing (WES) on tumors and their matched normal blood, in addition to RNA-seq from tumors of 31 sarcoma patients treated with pembrolizumab. We used advanced computational methods to investigate key immune properties, such as neoantigens and immune cell composition in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Results: A multifactorial analysis suggested that expression of high quality neoantigens in the context of specific immune cells in the TME are key prognostic markers of progression-free survival (PFS). The presence of several types of immune cells, including T cells, B cells and macrophages, in the TME were associated with improved PFS. Importantly, we also found the presence of both CD8+ T cells and neoantigens together was associated with improved survival compared to the presence of CD8+ T cells or neoantigens alone. Interestingly, this trend was not identified with the combined presence of CD8+ T cells and TMB; suggesting that a combined CD8+ T cell and neoantigen effect on PFS was important. Discussion: The outcome of this study may inform future trials that may lead to improved outcomes for sarcoma patients treated with ICI.

Artificial intelligence predicts the immunogenic landscape of SARS-CoV-2 leading to universal blueprints for vaccine designs.

The global population is at present suffering from a pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the novel coronavirus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The goal of this study was to use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict blueprints for designing universal vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, that contain a sufficiently broad repertoire of T-cell epitopes capable of providing coverage and protection across the global population. To help achieve these aims, we profiled the entire SARS-CoV-2 proteome across the most frequent 100 HLA-A, HLA-B and HLA-DR alleles in the human population, using host-infected cell surface antigen presentation and immunogenicity predictors from the NEC Immune Profiler suite of tools, and generated comprehensive epitope maps. We then used these epitope maps as input for a Monte Carlo simulation designed to identify statistically significant "epitope hotspot" regions in the virus that are most likely to be immunogenic across a broad spectrum of HLA types. We then removed epitope hotspots that shared significant homology with proteins in the human proteome to reduce the chance of inducing off-target autoimmune responses. We also analyzed the antigen presentation and immunogenic landscape of all the nonsynonymous mutations across 3,400 different sequences of the virus, to identify a trend whereby SARS-COV-2 mutations are predicted to have reduced potential to be presented by host-infected cells, and consequently detected by the host immune system. A sequence conservation analysis then removed epitope hotspots that occurred in less-conserved regions of the viral proteome. Finally, we used a database of the HLA haplotypes of approximately 22,000 individuals to develop a "digital twin" type simulation to model how effective different combinations of hotspots would work in a diverse human population; the approach identified an optimal constellation of epitope hotspots that could provide maximum coverage in the global population. By combining the antigen presentation to the infected-host cell surface and immunogenicity predictions of the NEC Immune Profiler with a robust Monte Carlo and digital twin simulation, we have profiled the entire SARS-CoV-2 proteome and identified a subset of epitope hotspots that could be harnessed in a vaccine formulation to provide a broad coverage across the global population.

Mind the gaps: overlooking inaccessible regions confounds statistical testing in genome analysis.

BACKGROUND: The current versions of reference genome assemblies still contain gaps represented by stretches of Ns. Since high throughput sequencing reads cannot be mapped to those gap regions, the regions are depleted of experimental data. Moreover, several technology platforms assay a targeted portion of the genomic sequence, meaning that regions from the unassayed portion of the genomic sequence cannot be detected in those experiments. We here refer to all such regions as inaccessible regions, and hypothesize that ignoring these regions in the null model may increase false findings in statistical testing of colocalization of genomic features. RESULTS: Our explorative analyses confirm that the genomic regions in public genomic tracks intersect very little with assembly gaps of human reference genomes (hg19 and hg38). The little intersection was observed only at the beginning and end portions of the gap regions. Further, we simulated a set of synthetic tracks by matching the properties of real genomic tracks in a way that nullified any true association between them. This allowed us to test our hypothesis that not avoiding inaccessible regions (as represented by assembly gaps) in the null model would result in spurious inflation of statistical significance. We contrasted the distributions of test statistics and p-values of Monte Carlo-based permutation tests that either avoided or did not avoid assembly gaps in the null model when testing colocalization between a pair of tracks. We observed that the statistical tests that did not account for assembly gaps in the null model resulted in a distribution of the test statistic that is shifted to the right and a distribution of p-values that is shifted to the left (indicating inflated significance). We observed a similar level of inflated significance in hg19 and hg38, despite assembly gaps covering a smaller proportion of the latter reference genome. CONCLUSION: We provide empirical evidence demonstrating that inaccessible regions, even when covering only a few percentages of the genome, can lead to a substantial amount of false findings if not accounted for in statistical colocalization analysis.

Coloc-stats: a unified web interface to perform colocalization analysis of genomic features.

Functional genomics assays produce sets of genomic regions as one of their main outputs. To biologically interpret such region-sets, researchers often use colocalization analysis, where the statistical significance of colocalization (overlap, spatial proximity) between two or more region-sets is tested. Existing colocalization analysis tools vary in the statistical methodology and analysis approaches, thus potentially providing different conclusions for the same research question. As the findings of colocalization analysis are often the basis for follow-up experiments, it is helpful to use several tools in parallel and to compare the results. We developed the Coloc-stats web service to facilitate such analyses. Coloc-stats provides a unified interface to perform colocalization analysis across various analytical methods and method-specific options (e.g. colocalization measures, resolution, null models). Coloc-stats helps the user to find a method that supports their experimental requirements and allows for a straightforward comparison across methods. Coloc-stats is implemented as a web server with a graphical user interface that assists users with configuring their colocalization analyses. Coloc-stats is freely available at https://hyperbrowser.uio.no/coloc-stats/.

GSuite HyperBrowser: integrative analysis of dataset collections across the genome and epigenome.

Background: Recent large-scale undertakings such as ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics have generated experimental data mapped to the human reference genome (as genomic tracks) representing a variety of functional elements across a large number of cell types. Despite the high potential value of these publicly available data for a broad variety of investigations, little attention has been given to the analytical methodology necessary for their widespread utilisation. Findings: We here present a first principled treatment of the analysis of collections of genomic tracks. We have developed novel computational and statistical methodology to permit comparative and confirmatory analyses across multiple and disparate data sources. We delineate a set of generic questions that are useful across a broad range of investigations and discuss the implications of choosing different statistical measures and null models. Examples include contrasting analyses across different tissues or diseases. The methodology has been implemented in a comprehensive open-source software system, the GSuite HyperBrowser. To make the functionality accessible to biologists, and to facilitate reproducible analysis, we have also developed a web-based interface providing an expertly guided and customizable way of utilizing the methodology. With this system, many novel biological questions can flexibly be posed and rapidly answered. Conclusions: Through a combination of streamlined data acquisition, interoperable representation of dataset collections, and customizable statistical analysis with guided setup and interpretation, the GSuite HyperBrowser represents a first comprehensive solution for integrative analysis of track collections across the genome and epigenome. The software is available at: https://hyperbrowser.uio.no.

ClusTrack: feature extraction and similarity measures for clustering of genome-wide data sets.

Clustering is a popular technique for explorative analysis of data, as it can reveal subgroupings and similarities between data in an unsupervised manner. While clustering is routinely applied to gene expression data, there is a lack of appropriate general methodology for clustering of sequence-level genomic and epigenomic data, e.g. ChIP-based data. We here introduce a general methodology for clustering data sets of coordinates relative to a genome assembly, i.e. genomic tracks. By defining appropriate feature extraction approaches and similarity measures, we allow biologically meaningful clustering to be performed for genomic tracks using standard clustering algorithms. An implementation of the methodology is provided through a tool, ClusTrack, which allows fine-tuned clustering analyses to be specified through a web-based interface. We apply our methods to the clustering of occupancy of the H3K4me1 histone modification in samples from a range of different cell types. The majority of samples form meaningful subclusters, confirming that the definitions of features and similarity capture biological, rather than technical, variation between the genomic tracks. Input data and results are available, and can be reproduced, through a Galaxy Pages document at http://hyperbrowser.uio.no/hb/u/hb-superuser/p/clustrack. The clustering functionality is available as a Galaxy tool, under the menu option "Specialized analyzis of tracks", and the submenu option "Cluster tracks based on genome level similarity", at the Genomic HyperBrowser server: http://hyperbrowser.uio.no/hb/.