Deciphering the human antigenome

ABSTRACT

Recent technological advances in genomics, mass spectrometry, and epitope identification algorithms offer significant potential to identify novel antigenic targets for vaccine and immunotherapeutic development. On 30 April 2015, leading immunologists and bioinformatics scientists met to consider how best to utilize these advances towards deciphering the human antigenome and exploiting this information for prevention and control of infectious and neoplastic diseases.

KEYWORDS:

• Human vaccines project
• antigenome
• epitopes
• antibodies
• T cells
• bioinformatics

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants from the workshop who included Soren Buus (University of Copenhagen), Michal Bissani-Sternberg (Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry), Etienne Caron, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Huw Davies (University of California, Irvine, and Antigen Discovery, Inc.), Ben Doranz (Integral Molecular, Inc.), David Fremont (Washington University), William Hildebrand (University of Oklahoma), Sebastian Joyce (Vanderbilt University), David Koelle (University of Washington), Wayne Koff (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative), David Lewinsohn (Oregon Health and Science University), Ole Lund (DTU Systembiologi Denmark), Morton Nielsen (Technical University of Denmark), Bjoern Peters (La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology), Ted Schenkelberg (West Monument Consulting, LLC), Richard Scheurmann (J Craig Venter Institute), Alessandro Sette (La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology), Nicola Ternette (University of Oxford), and David Tscharke (Australian National University). The authors thank Jeffrey T Safrit for editorial review; Sandi Glass for workshop preparations, logistical and organizational support and copy editing; and Lisa Gieber for assistance with references.