{"id":46560,"date":"2025-10-23T18:47:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/circulating-neoantigen-and-viral-oncoprotein-specific-cd8-t-cells-share-a-transcriptional-signature\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T18:47:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:47:34","slug":"circulating-neoantigen-and-viral-oncoprotein-specific-cd8-t-cells-share-a-transcriptional-signature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/circulating-neoantigen-and-viral-oncoprotein-specific-cd8-t-cells-share-a-transcriptional-signature\/","title":{"rendered":"Circulating neoantigen- and viral oncoprotein-specific CD8+ T cells share a transcriptional signature"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><b>Cancer Immunol Res<\/b>. 2025 Oct 23. doi: 10.1158\/2326-6066.CIR-25-0082. Online ahead of print.<\/p>\n<p><b>ABSTRACT<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tumor-specific CD8+ T cells in blood appear to be important for and predictive of response to anti-PD-1 therapies. However, as most tumor antigens are unique to a given patient, identification of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells is not routinely feasible. Here, we characterized polyomavirus-specific CD8+ T cells from blood of 17 patients with virus-driven Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). We identified a 98-gene signature, SPoTT (Signature of Peripheral Tumor-specific CD8+ T cells), that discriminated circulating tumor-specific CD8+ T cells from other T cells in immunotherapy-na\u00efve patients. We observed profound transcriptomic differences among tumor-specific CD8+ T cells from blood versus from tumor. In validation cohorts of MCC, as well as neoantigen-driven cancers, SPoTT was able to identify viral oncoprotein- and neoantigen-specific CD8+ T cells with both sensitivity and specificity above 75%. We also tested a previously described 151-gene signature (NeoTCR_PBL) trained on neoantigen-specific CD8+ T cells and found it was able to recognize MCPyV-specific T cells with sensitivity of 66% and a specificity of 88%. These findings show that circulating tumor-specific CD8+ T cells share fundamental characteristics across diverse tumor antigen types. More broadly, insights into antitumor T cells gained from virus-driven cancers are also likely to be relevant in mutationally-driven cancers.<\/p>\n<p>PMID:<a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/41129142\/?utm_source=SimplePie&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_content=101614637&amp;ff=20251023124734&amp;v=2.18.0.post22+67771e2\">41129142<\/a> | DOI:<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1158\/2326-6066.CIR-25-0082\">10.1158\/2326-6066.CIR-25-0082<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cancer Immunol Res. 2025 Oct 23. doi: 10.1158\/2326-6066.CIR-25-0082. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Tumor-specific CD8+ T cells in blood appear to be important for and predictive of response to anti-PD-1 therapies. However, as most tumor antigens are unique to a given patient, identification of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells is not routinely feasible. Here, we characterized &#8230; <a title=\"Circulating neoantigen- and viral oncoprotein-specific CD8+ T cells share a transcriptional signature\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/circulating-neoantigen-and-viral-oncoprotein-specific-cd8-t-cells-share-a-transcriptional-signature\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Circulating neoantigen- and viral oncoprotein-specific CD8+ T cells share a transcriptional signature\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancer-immunology-reserch","category-publicaciones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmuno.es\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}