MHC class II binding prediction: a little help from a friend

Ivan Dimitrov, Panayot Garnev, Darren R Flower, Irini Doytchinova

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Vaccines are the greatest single instrument of prophylaxis against infectious diseases, with immeasurable benefits to human wellbeing. The accurate and reliable prediction of peptide-MHC binding is fundamental to the robust identification of T-cell epitopes and thus the successful design of peptide- and protein-based vaccines. The prediction of MHC class II peptide binding has hitherto proved recalcitrant and refractory. Here we illustrate the utility of existing computational tools for in silico prediction of peptides binding to class II MHCs. Most of the methods, tested in the present study, detect more than the half of the true binders in the top 5% of all possible nonamers generated from one protein. This number increases in the top 10% and 15% and then does not change significantly. For the top 15% the identified binders approach 86%. In terms of lab work this means 85% less expenditure on materials, labour and time. We show that while existing caveats are well founded, nonetheless use of computational models of class II binding can still offer viable help to the work of the immunologist and vaccinologist.
Original languageEnglish
Article number705821
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology
Volume2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2010 Ivan Dimitrov et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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