Immunitrack co-authors paper with MD Anderson Cancer Institute, published in PNAS Nexus
The paper shares important insights into peptide properties that could broadly inform new epitope discovery for vaccine and cancer immunotherapy development.
In July 2022, Immunitrack co-authored a scientific paper with researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center. The paper was published in PNAS Nexus and describes how nonpocket peptide-HLA interactions contribute to peptide binding and stability. Data presented in the paper show that HLA-I/peptide interactions involving position 1 and position 4 play a significant role in peptide-binding stability and can strongly influence overall antigen presentation as analyzed at the immunopeptidome level. Two positively charged residues located near the top of peptide-binding cleft facilitate interactions with negatively charged residues at position 4 of presented peptides. Loss of these interactions was shown to impair HLA-I/peptide binding and complex stability, as co-demonstrated in vitro by Immunitrack.
These findings provide fundamental insights into peptide antigen binding that could broadly inform epitope discovery in the context of viral vaccine development and cancer immunotherapy.