@inbook{25e6f59a82bf4ba9af55c02e55375792,
title = "T-cell epitope discovery for therapeutic cancer vaccines",
abstract = "The success of recent immune checkpoint blockade trials in solid tumors has demonstrated the tremendous potential of immune-mediated treatment strategies for cancer therapy. These immune therapies activate preexisting cytotoxic CD8+ T cells (CTL) to selectively target and eradicate malignant cells. In vitro models suggest that these therapies may be more effective in combination with priming of CTL using cancer vaccines. CTL-mediated tumor targeting is achieved by its recognition of tumor antigenic epitopes presented on human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecules by tumor cells. Discovering CTL-antigenic epitopes is therefore central to the design of therapeutic T-cell vaccines and immune monitoring of these complex immunotherapies. However, selecting and monitoring T-cell epitopes remains difficult due to the extensive polymorphism of HLA alleles and the presence of confounding non-immunogenic self-peptides. To overcome these challenges, this chapter presents methodologies for the design of CTL-targeted vaccines using selection of target HLA alleles, novel integrated computational strategies to predict HLA-class I CTL epitopes, and epitope validation methods using short-term ex vivo T-cell stimulation. This strategy results in the improved efficiency for selecting antigenic epitopes for CTL-mediated vaccines and for immune monitoring of tumor antigens.",
keywords = "Cytotoxic CD8 T cells, HLA typing, T-cell epitope",
author = "Sri Krishna and Karen Anderson",
year = "2016",
month = apr,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/978-1-4939-3387-7_45",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "1403",
series = "Methods in Molecular Biology",
publisher = "Humana Press Inc.",
pages = "779--796",
booktitle = "Methods in Molecular Biology",
}