Immunogenicity engineering

Immuno'line™ technologies can be applied to map, identify, characterise  and engineer T-cell epitopes, i.e. the parts of a protein that are responsible for immunogenicity.

When a protein is found to induce an immune response, the precise portion that is responsible for immunogenicity can be identified using Immuno'Line™ technologies.

Overlapping peptides covering the sequence of the protein of interest are used. The first step to identification of immunodominant epitopes consists in evaluating the capacity of each individual peptide to trigger specific T-cell activation.

If immunodominant peptides are identified, these can be further characterised using HLA binding assays: the affinity of each immunodominant peptide for individual HLA class II molecules from our collection in measured using CEA's automated platform. This analysis provides additional information on the residues that are involved in immunogenicity, thus opening the way to engineer your biologics.

After characterising the immunogenic T-epitopes, Protéus brings an exceptional blend of know-how and technologies for engineering variants with customised immunogenicity:

• Vaccines with enhanced T-cell immunogenicity
• Therapeutic proteins with low or no immunogenicity

Please contact us to discuss your project and build a custom strategy.

• Develop non immunogenic counterparts of your candidate therapeutic protein
• Engineer a candidate vaccine for greater immunogenicity

Based on information gathered through Immuno’line™ technologies and services (whole protein immunogenicity evaluation and epitope identification), Protéus will design variants of your protein containing point mutations localised in the immunodominant peptides.

The corresponding peptides are then synthesised and tested for binding to individual HLA class II proteins contained in our collection and/or for activation of T-cells.

Additional gene shuffling or directed evolution approaches can be taken, as appropriate, to build custom biologics with sought immunogenic properties.