Tools to define the melanoma-associated immunopeptidome

4 years ago

Tools to define the melanoma-associated immunopeptidome

Eva Bräunlein, Angela M. Krackhardt

Immunotherapies have been traditionally applied in malignant melanoma, which represent one of the most immunogenic tumours. Recently, immune checkpoint modulation has shown high therapeutic efficacy and may provide long-term survival in a significant proportion of affected patients. T cells are the major players in tumour rejection and recognize tumour cells predominantly in an MHC-dependent way. The immunopeptidome comprises the peptide repertoire presented by MHC class I and II molecules on the surface of the body's cells including tumour cells. To understand characteristics of suitable rejection antigens as well as respective effective T-cell responses, determination of the immunopeptidome is of utmost importance. Suitable rejection antigens need to be further characterized and validated not only to systematically improve current therapeutic approaches, but also to develop individualized treatment options. In this review, we report on current tools to explore the immunopeptidome in human melanoma and discuss current understanding and future developments to specifically detect and select those antigens that may be most relevant and promising for effective tumour rejection. Within this manuscript, we review current approaches for the investigation of the melanoma-associated immunopeptidome. This comprises the elucidation of different classes of target antigens as well as technical tools for the identification of such antigens. We sum up the interdependence of state-of-the-art analyses and give an outlook on future developments necessary to further improve our knowledge on the melanoma's immunopeptidome and respective T-cell responses in order to optimize current treatment options.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1111/imm.12803