Mice, men and MHC supertypes

Abstract

Evaluation of: Tan TG, Mui E, Cong H et al. Identification of T. gondii epitopes, adjuvants, and host genetic factors that influence protection of mice and humans. Vaccine 28(23), 3977–3989 (2010).

Mice are still the most used model organism in initial phases of vaccine design. Bioinformatics is becoming increasingly more important in vaccine development, both for the design of novel simplified epitope-based vaccines and also in order to understand the specific immune response of selected vaccine formulations. Toxoplasma gondii, an intracellular parasite, causes severe neurologic and ocular disease in congenitally infected and immunocompromised individuals. No protective vaccine exists against human toxoplasmosis. However, studies with mice have revealed immunodominant cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes originating from type II strains. These verified epitopes might be useful in human vaccines as the peptide binding repertoire of H-2L^d MHC and MHCs belonging to the HLA-B07 supertype are very similar. Here, the results obtained using these epitopes in BALB/c as well as transgenic HLA-B*0702 mice are discussed. The stunning results obtained from the use of refined computational methods for the prediction of cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes are also discussed. The results highlight some important issues regarding both the use of mice but also the choice of bioinformatics methods in vaccine development.

Keywords::

• bioinformatics
• CD8⁺ T cells
• ERAAP
• MHC
• mouse
• supertypes
• Toxoplasma gondii

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Claus Lundegaard is supported by the following NIH grants: Large Scale Antibody and T-cell Epitope Discovery, contract no.: #HHSN266200400025C; and Discovery of epitopes of NIAID category A-C pathogens using bioinformatics and immunology, contract no.: #HHSN266200400083C. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.