KAIST announced on the 2nd that a team led by Professor Jeong Kyun Choi of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, in a joint study with the company ‘Neogene Logic,’ has developed a new AI model to predict neoantigens—a key element in developing personalized cancer vaccines—and has identified the importance of B cells in cancer immunotherapy. The research findings were published in the international journal *Science Advances* on December 3.

Neoantigens are protein fragments derived from cancer cell mutations that serve as unique markers distinguishing only cancer cells. Moderna and BioNTech developed their COVID-19 vaccines using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform secured during their research on neoantigen-based cancer vaccines. Currently, global pharmaceutical companies are actively conducting clinical trials for cancer vaccines.

The problem is that most existing cancer vaccine technologies focus solely on T-cell-centered immune responses. B cells, along with T cells, play a key role in the immune system, and recent studies have increasingly demonstrated their importance in anti-cancer immune activity.