MHC1-TIP enables single-tube multimodal immunopeptidome profiling and uncovers intratumoral heterogeneity in antigen presentation

Abstract

Profiling antigens presented on MHC class I molecules on the cell surface is essential to identify candidate antigens for targeted and personalized immunotherapies. However, mass spectrometry-based immunopeptidomics has traditionally been limited by high input requirements, extensive sample manipulation, and expensive reagents. To overcome these challenges, we developed MHC1-TIP: a scalable, single-tube and cost-effective workflow to enable robust MHC-I ligandome recovery from cell lines, patient-derived organoids, and sub-milligram amounts of clinical tissues. Moreover, MHC1-TIP also preserves compatibility with additional omics profiling technologies and we demonstrate its capacity for quantitative and multimodal profiling of the proteome and immunopeptidome from the same sample to enable integrated analyses of protein expression and antigen presentation. Application of MHC1-TIP to primary renal cell carcinoma fragments revealed extensive intratumoral heterogeneity in antigen presentation that was poorly correlated with source protein expression. MHC1-TIP represents a broadly applicable and sensitive approach for low-input, multimodal immunopeptidomics with clinical and translational relevance.