Weizmann Scientists Turn Resistance Mutations Into Immunotherapy Targets

Overview

• Using a computational pipeline called SpotNeoMet, researchers systematically identified therapy-resistance mutations shared across patients.
• The team focused on metastatic prostate cancer and pinpointed three recurrent neo-antigens linked to drug resistance.
• These neo-antigens triggered targeted immune responses in laboratory tests and showed activity in mouse models.
• The approach aims to enable less individualized immunotherapies by targeting shared resistance markers rather than patient-unique mutations.
• The study, led by Prof. Yardena Samuels with collaborators in Israel, North America and Europe, appears in Cancer Discovery (2025).