Immunogenomic pan-cancer landscape reveals immune escape mechanisms and immunoediting histories.

ABSTRACT

Immune reactions in the tumor microenvironment are an important hallmark of cancer, and emerging immune therapies have been proven effective against several types of cancers. To investigate cancer genome-immune interactions and the role of immunoediting or immune escape mechanisms in cancer development, we analyzed 2834 whole genome and RNA sequencing datasets across 31 distinct tumor types with respect to key immunogenomic aspects and provided comprehensive immunogenomic profiles of pan-cancers. We found that selective copy number changes in immune-related genes may contribute to immune escape. Furthermore, we developed an index of the immunoediting history of each tumor sample based on the information of mutations in exonic regions and pseudogenes and evaluated the immunoediting history of each tumor. Our immuno-genomic analyses of pan-cancers have the potential to identify a subset of tumors with immunogenicity and diverse backgrounds or intrinsic pathways associated with their immune status and immunoediting history.