Molecules for Studying Cellular Immune Responses to Vaccines and Therapeutics

HLA molecules are indispensable and invaluable tools for efficient vaccine research and development. Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death among adults and the most prominent cause of death in infants and children worldwide. Thus, rapid availability of prophylactic vaccines for cancers and infectious diseases such as HIV, HPV, influenza and diarrheal and respiratory diseases is a world-wide health concern.

Available for licensing is a large variety of cell lines, each expressing a particular HLA molecule and the plasmids encoding them, including soluble HLAs. This technology has broad application for development of vaccines and immunotherapeutics. HLA molecules can be used to characterize HLA-peptide binding and elucidate the process of both antigen and tumor cell peptide-processing and presentation. In addition to wild-type HLA molecules, available for licensing are HLAs containing point-mutations in the peptide binding regions. The mutated HLAs can be used to evaluate key peptide interactions. Additionally, soluble HLA molecules are useful for elucidating the structural details of HLAs and HLA-peptide complexes through crystallographic studies, which can be used to aid in vaccine design. Thus, the present technology has the potential to lend insight into immune recognition and identification of immunogenic epitopes for the systematic design of peptide and protein subunit vaccines for cancers and infectious diseases. Furthermore, this technology has application in the development of therapies for autoimmune and related immunological diseases, including those associated with organ transplantation.