Tumor antigens and immune subtypes guided mRNA vaccine development for kidney renal clear cell carcinoma

Current treatment strategy for kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is limited. Tumor-associated antigens, especially neoantigen-based personalized mRNA vaccines represent new strategies and manifest clinical benefits in solid tumors, but only a small proportion of patients could benefit from them, which prompts us to identify effective antigens and suitable populations to facilitate mRNA vaccines application in cancer therapy. Through performing expression, mutation, survival and correlation analyses in TCGA-KIRC dataset, we identified four genes including DNA topoisomerase II alpha (TOP2A), neutrophil cytosol factor 4 (NCF4), formin-like protein 1 (FMNL1) and docking protein 3 (DOK3) as potential KIRC-specific neoantigen candidates. These four genes were upregulated, mutated and positively associated with survival and antigen-presenting cells in TCGA-KIRC. Furthermore, we identified two immune subtypes, named renal cell carcinoma immune subtype 1 (RIS1) and RIS2, of KIRC. Distinct clinical, molecular and immune-related signatures were observed between RIS1 and RIS2. Patients of RIS2 had better survival outcomes than those of RIS1. Further comprehensive immune-related analyses indicated that RIS1 is immunologically “hot” and represent an immunosuppressive phenotype, whereas RIS2 represents an immunologically “cold” phenotype. RIS1 and RIS2 also showed differential features with regard to tumor infiltrating immune cells and immune checkpoint-related genes. Moreover, the immune landscape construction identified the immune cell components of each KIRC patient, predicted their survival outcomes, and assisted the development of personalized mRNA vaccines. In summary, our study identified TOP2A, NCF4, FMNL1 and DOK3 as potential effective neoantigens for KIRC mRNA vaccine development, and patients with RIS2 tumor might benefit more from mRNA vaccination. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12943-021-01465-w.