preview

Is The Molecular Interaction Of CD8 + T Cells With Antigenic Epitopes?

Good Essays

The interaction of CD8+ T cells with peptide-MHC complexes (pMHCs) is a key event in the development of cell-mediated immunity (Grakoui, 1999). MHC class I (MHC-I) molecules typically present 8-11 aa peptides derived predominantly from proteasomal degradation of intracellular proteins, either self-peptides or infection-derived antigens (Blum, Wearsch, & Cresswell, 2013). T cell receptors (TCRs) from CD8+ T cells bind antigenic pMHC molecules, triggering a downstream signaling cascade that leads to T cell activation, differentiation, and ultimately to cytolysis of target cells presenting the same epitope (Hennecke & Wiley, 2001). Vaccines and immunotherapies for the treatment of infection and cancer seek to incorporate cytotoxic T cell …show more content…

Although computational tools have improved over the past decade, they have not been trained to predict immunogenicity. The major limitation when using such prediction algorithms is the presence of a significant number of binders from a given antigen that will never lead to an immune response (Newell et al., 2013). Thus, immunogenic CTL epitopes fulfill additional criteria that go beyond antigen processing and MHC-binding.
Here, we sought to identify the biochemical criteria that define immunogenicity within the subset of MHC-I binding peptides. Using a curated repository of MHC-I epitopes from the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) (Vita et al., 2009), we evaluated the biochemical properties of aas that discriminate between immunogenic epitopes and non-immunogenic self-peptides. We found a strong bias towards hydrophobicity in aa residues of immunogenic CTL epitopes that is highly selective for exposed TCR contact residues. Using these criteria, we trained an artificial neural network (ANN) model to identify immunogenic CTL epitopes from a data set and empirically assessed our prediction model for 3 human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) Gag protein variants in a murine model of immunogenicity. We demonstrate the utility of this ANN

Get Access