Pieter-Paul Strybol

ImmuneSpec is a biotech service provider that offers high-sensitive immunopeptidomics analysis. Our advanced platform enables the identification of maximized numbers of MHC-I & MHC-II presented peptides. These short pieces of protein are presented on the surface of the cells where they can evoke an immune response if recognized by T cells as non-self or aberrant. Our analysis has three main applications: 1)      The identification of tumor antigens such as neoantigens, which are MHC-presented peptides from tumor samples. These make for valuable targets to use in the development of therapeutic vaccines and other immuno-therapeutics. 2)      We can also identify pathogen derived antigens which are presented peptides specific to each pathogen in biopsy samples from infected patients or cells. These can be used to define antigens-targets for the development of broad-spectrum prophylactic vaccines. 3)      The third application is the MAPPS assay, performed in context of immunogenicity risk assessment, which is the generation of the immunogenicity profile of a biotherapeutic by pinpointing all putative T cell epitopes. This assay allows ranking different lead biotherapeutics based on their potential to evoke unwanted immunogenicity so that those with the lowest risk can be selected. and has the highest long term efficacy