Computational Immunomics Research
Epitope Discovery for Immunotherapy
Epitopes are short, characteristic peptides suitable for eliciting a response of the human immune system. Knowledge of
Clinical Peptide Vaccination
Personalized multi-peptide vaccines are currently under intensive discussion as a treatment option in precision medicine. We develop and apply computational methods to prioritize candidates for clinical vaccination tailored to individual patients with an emphasis on cancer neoantigens. Moreover, we support clinical decision making providing interactive web-based solutions to medical principal investigators.
HLA Typing
The HLA gene complex encodes antigen presenting cell surface proteins, and is one of the most diverse regions of the human genome. The HLA genotype of an individual distinctly impacts their personal epitope repertoire, and thus plays a central role in transplantation medicine and immunotherapy. However, HLA alleles are hard to identify from NGS data with general purpose genotyping tools alone. Our group develops the HLA typing software OptiType, which can accurately genotype these highly polymorphic genes.
Antibody Humanization and Deimmunization
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are an increasingly important class of biotherapeutics. Numerous antibodies have been approved as treatments for cancer and other diseases. However, their design remains to be a major challenge. Typically, parts of the antibody are xenografted from murine counterparts. This process yields numerous non-functional design candidates and additionally introduces targets for unwanted immune responses. We develop computational methods to aid the antibody design process and produce higher quality candidates while reducing their immunogenicity.
