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Microproteins exclusively produced in liver tumors could lead to cancer vaccines
A study led by the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, with Cima University of Navarra and Pompeu Fabra University, has identified a group of small molecules exclusive to liver tumors that could be key to developing cancer vaccines. These are microproteins, very small proteins expressed only by tumor cells. This can result in the activation of immune cells against the tumor. The study is published in Science Advances.
By integrating data from tumors and healthy tissue from over one hundred liver cancer patients, the researchers identified this set of microproteins. These small molecules are generated from genes that were previously thought incapable of encoding proteins.
“In recent years, there has been increasing attention to this group of genes, which, due to their short length or low expression, were considered non-coding. New techniques have revealed that some of these genes can indeed produce small proteins,” says Mar Albà, an ICREA researcher at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute.
This discovery was made possible through a combination of computational techniques such as transcriptomics, translatomics, and proteomics, along with laboratory experiments aimed at studying the immune response.
