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ImmunoTar—integrative prioritization of cell surface targets for cancer immunotherapy

2025· article· en· W4407388488 on OpenAlexafffund
Rawan Shraim, Brian Mooney, Karina L. Conkrite, Amber K Hamilton, Gregg B. Morin, Poul H. Sorensen, John M. Maris, Sharon J. Diskin, Ahmet Saçan

Bibliographic record

VenueBioinformatics · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicCancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers
Canadian institutionsCanada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences CentreUniversity of British ColumbiaSpinal Cord Injury BC
FundersNational Cancer InstituteCancer Research UKNational Institutes of HealthMichael Smith Health Research BCMark Foundation For Cancer Research
KeywordsIdentification (biology)Chimeric antigen receptorPrioritizationImmunotherapyComputational biologyCancer immunotherapyCancerComputer scienceProteomicsBioinformaticsBiologyGene

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

MOTIVATION: Cancer remains a leading cause of mortality globally. Recent improvements in survival have been facilitated by the development of targeted and less toxic immunotherapies, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). These therapies, effective in treating both pediatric and adult patients with solid and hematological malignancies, rely on the identification of cancer-specific surface protein targets. While technologies like RNA sequencing and proteomics exist to survey these targets, identifying optimal targets for immunotherapies remains a challenge in the field. RESULTS: To address this challenge, we developed ImmunoTar, a novel computational tool designed to systematically prioritize candidate immunotherapeutic targets. ImmunoTar integrates user-provided RNA-sequencing or proteomics data with quantitative features from multiple public databases, selected based on predefined criteria, to generate a score representing the gene's suitability as an immunotherapeutic target. We validated ImmunoTar using three distinct cancer datasets, demonstrating its effectiveness in identifying both known and novel targets across various cancer phenotypes. By compiling diverse data into a unified platform, ImmunoTar enables comprehensive evaluation of surface proteins, streamlining target identification and empowering researchers to efficiently allocate resources, thereby accelerating the development of effective cancer immunotherapies. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Code and data to run and test ImmunoTar are available at https://github.com/sacanlab/immunotar.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.005
Threshold uncertainty score0.018

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.002
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.011
GPT teacher head0.291
Teacher spread0.280 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations3
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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