Immunoinformatics: Predicting Peptide-MHC Binding

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Immunoinformatics is a discipline that applies methods of computer science to study and model the immune system. A fundamental question addressed by immunoinformatics is how to understand the rules of antigen presentation by MHC molecules to T cells, a process that is central to adaptive immune responses to infections and cancer. In the modern era of personalized medicine, the ability to model and predict which antigens can be presented by MHC is key to manipulating the immune system and designing strategies for therapeutic intervention. Since the MHC is both polygenic and extremely polymorphic, each individual possesses a personalized set of MHC molecules with different peptide-binding specificities, and collectively they present a unique individualized peptide imprint of the ongoing protein metabolism. Mapping all MHC allotypes is an enormous undertaking that cannot be achieved without a strong bioinformatics component. Computational tools for the prediction of peptide-MHC binding have thus become essential inmost pipelines forTcell epitope discovery and an inescapable component of vaccine and cancer research. Here, we describe the development of several such tools, from pioneering efforts to the current state-of-the-art methods, that have allowed for accurate predictions of peptide binding of all MHC molecules, even including those that have not yet been characterized experimentally.

Original languageEnglish
JournalAnnual Review of Biomedical Data Science
Volume3
Pages (from-to)191-215
Number of pages25
ISSN2574-3414
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Research areas

  • T cells, MHC, antigen presentation, immune epitopes, machine learning, T-CELL EPITOPES, CLASS-I BINDING, ARTIFICIAL NEURAL-NETWORK, TAP TRANSPORT EFFICIENCY, MASS-SPECTROMETRY, HISTOCOMPATIBILITY ANTIGEN, 3-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE, IMMUNOGENIC PEPTIDES, PROTEASOMAL CLEAVAGE, INDEPENDENT BINDING

ID: 269913644