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Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) is a form of personalised immunotherapy which has shown promising results in metastasised cancer. For this treatment, autologous T lymphocytes are selected and stimulated in vitro before re-administration in large numbers. However, only a fraction of patients benefit from ACT, and it is not yet known what biomarkers can predict treatment outcome. In this review, we describe what tumour characteristics are associated with response to ACT. Based on the current knowledge, the best candidate biomarker for a good anti-tumour response seems to be a large number of neoantigens with a homogeneous distribution across the tumour in combination with sufficient MHC-I expression level. Additionally, it is necessary to be able to isolate a diverse population of T cells reactive to these neoantigens from tumour tissue or peripheral blood. Additional promising candidate biomarkers shared with other cancer immunotherapies are a large number of tumour-infiltrating cytotoxic and memory T cells, normal levels of glycolysis, and a pro-inflammatory cytokine profile within the tumour. Intense research in this field will hopefully result in identification of more biomarkers for cancers with low mutational load.

The composition of protein surfaces determines both affinity and specificity of protein-protein interactions. Matching of hydrophobic contacts and charged groups on both sites of the interface are crucial to ensure specificity. Here, we propose a highlighting scheme, YRB, which highlights both hydrophobicity and charge in protein structures. YRB highlighting visualizes hydrophobicity by highlighting all carbon atoms that are not bound to nitrogen and oxygen atoms. The charged oxygens of glutamate and aspartate are highlighted red and the charged nitrogens of arginine and lysine are highlighted blue. For a set of representative examples, we demonstrate that YRB highlighting intuitively visualizes segments on protein surfaces that contribute to specificity in protein-protein interfaces, including Hsp90/co-chaperone complexes, the SNARE complex and a transmembrane domain. We provide YRB highlighting in form of a script that runs using the software PyMOL.