Comparison of personalized dendritic cell-based vaccination strategies.

Antigen selection and prioritization represent crucial determinants of vaccines' efficacy. Here, we compare two personalized dendritic cell-based vaccination strategies using whole-tumor-lysate or neoantigens. Data in mouse and in cancer patients demonstrate that peptide vaccines using neoantigens predicted on the sole basis of in silico peptide-MHC binding affinity underperform relative to whole-tumor-lysate vaccines. In contrast, effective in vitro peptide-MHC binding affinity and peptide immunogenicity significantly improve the prioritization of tumor-rejecting neoepitopes and yield to more efficacious peptide vaccines.