In recent years, immunotherapy, i.e. the specific induction of anti-tumor immune responses, has revolutionized the treatment of cancer. However, such immunotherapeutic approaches are not yet available for all cancer entities and many patients often do not respond or only respond for a limited time to currently available therapeutic options. Here, peptide-based immunotherapy represents a comparatively low side-effect option for inducing specific immune responses against tumor cells in patients. Peptide-based immunotherapy offers a comparatively low side-effect option for inducing specific immune responses against tumor cells in patients. Peptides are short protein fragments that each body cell presents on its surface to the T cells of the immune system on so-called human leukocyte antigens (HLA).

Tumor cells and also virus-infected cells differ from healthy cells and thus enable the immune system to recognize them as foreign. These so-called tumor-associated peptides are the key to a targeted immune response against the tumor cells, which can be activated by peptide-based immunotherapies and thus used to fight the tumor. However, peptide-based immunotherapy need not be limited to tumor diseases. This technique can also be used for immunization or targeted boosting of T cells in viral infections.

The bioinformatic team has the role to processes highly complex data generated by mass spectrometry and other omics technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc). Using existing and novel approaches, it assists us in identifying potential new immunotherapy targets. The code that is developed by this team is present for internal use here. Furthermore, our contributions can be observed at nf-core pipelines: mhcquant and epitopeprediction