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Ann Clin Trials Vaccines Res. 2017 | Volume 1 Issue 2
Global Vaccines & Vaccination Summit & B2B
November 01-02, 2017 | Toronto, Canada
A rapid platform immunogenicity testing of cancer (neo) epitopes amenable to predict responders
from non-responders
Pirouz Daftarian
and
Marc Delcommenne
MBL International Corporation, USA
O
nly a fraction of cancer patients benefits from immune
checkpoint blockades (ICB). Those who respond to ICB
have some intrinsic anti-tumor immune responses. The
effectiveness of such therapies depends on the intrinsic
antitumor immunity namely preexisting tumor-specific
cytotoxic T cells. A notion that has intensified research
studies on cancer vaccines to assist ICB, with an aim to
treat those cancer patients that currently do not respond
to ICB therapies. In the recent years, the research tools and
technologies for the identification of cancer mutations and
of potential neoepitopes have improved dramatically, to the
point that they have never been this promising. However,
such candidate neoepitopes must be validated functionally
for their immunogenicity, only those that are expressed
and can be processed and presented are real neoepitopes.
A solid characterization or indication of true neoepitopes
is that they can bind to the MHC groove. Indeed, it is
difficult to make a verdict on the immunogenicity of (neo)
epitopes without a rapid method to measure the binding
of these peptides to MHC of the hosts. We have devised a
rapid, user-friendly peptide exchange tetramer assay (that
can help determine the binding of novel peptides to MHC
class I molecules and to generate new specificity MHC class
I tetramers for peptide specific T cell detection. Here, we
show data on the validation of the platform and present
data on how this platform may be used to discriminate
responders from non-responders. For the validation of
the platform, peptides were assessed for their HLA-A2402
binding and data from three different laboratories. Studies
are ongoing to determine how this assay may discriminate
between responders and non-responders to peptide based
vaccine therapy, which will be discussed.
Speaker Biography
Pirouz Daftarian is the Applications Manager, at MBL International focusing on
applications in immuno-oncology. He is also a Volunteer Assistant Professor University
of Miami, USA. He is a Vaccinologist/Immuno-Oncologist with 20 years of experience
in T-cell biology, vaccine development. IVD assay development for I-O biomarker and
surrogates of tumor rejection. He has nine patents and more than 50 publications in
peer reviewed journals.
e:
pdaftarian@jsrmicro.com