Peptide drugs post-translational modification

To verify the immunogenic potential of the peptides identified via MAPPs, candidate epitopes are routinely screened in a T cell activation assay which involves human blood-derived APCs and autologous T cells from the same blood donor. In comparison to in silico tools described above, MAPPs has several advantages in T cell epitope identification (i) it narrows down the number of potentially relevant epitopes, as predictable by in silico tools, to a few immunodominant epitopes so that the potency of the drug can be retained more easily (ii) it takes into account post-translational modifications of biologies that may change the pattern of relevant epitopes and (iii) it can be done with fully formulated biologies—a feature not covered by any of the other approaches described above. 

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