High-throughput characterization of the ovarian cancer HLA peptidome

Background T cells recognize cancer cells via human leukocyte antigen (HLA)/peptide complexes, and class I HLA-restricted tumor infiltrating T lymphocytes correspond to favorable prognosis in several cancers, including ovarian cancer–the most deadly gynecologic disease [1]. The accurate identification of tumor-specific HLA/peptide complexes is pivotal to their exploitation as targets in immunotherapies such as peptide vaccination, transgenic T cell therapy, or antibody tumor targeting. Here, a high-throughput peptide analysis method was used to directly sequence the HLA-A*02:01 peptidome of ovarian cancer cells and to identify HLA/ peptide complexes distinct to tumor cells.