T cell vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are being developed at a rapid pace, but it is imperative that the proteins or peptides they deliver bind to a large variety of HLA haplotypes in the global population. Using a computational tool designed to predict candidate neoantigens for cancer vaccines, this preprint identifies 1,103 unique 9-mer antigens from the SARS-CoV-2 peptidome, each of which binds to a median of 3 of 1,022 HLA class I alleles. This resulted in 6,748 peptide–MHC pairs with high binding affinity. Up to 684 peptides were derived from each viral protein tested. Furthermore, 12 of the identified SARS-CoV-2 epitopes match SARS-CoV epitopes that were previously shown to generate T cell responses ex vivo and in vitro. This publicly available dataset will be an important resource to guide vaccine development.
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Campbell, K. M. et al. Prediction of SARS-CoV-2 epitopes across 9360 HLA class I alleles. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.016931 (2020)
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Saffern, M. Cancer therapy tool informs COVID-19 vaccines. Nat Rev Immunol 20, 352 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-020-0326-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-020-0326-1