Scientific focus: Functional Immunopeptidomics
The scientific focus of the group is on the immunopeptidome, the repertoire of peptides presented on MHC molecules, and on the impact of peptide presentation for anti-tumor T cell recognition, immune escape, and therapeutic susceptibility. Understanding how the immune system recognizes tumor cells, why recognition often fails to control tumor progression, and how differential protein expression in tumors modulates both escape and vulnerability is central to our work.
A major aim is to translate peptide-level insights into better immunotherapy targets by combining discovery immunopeptidomics with functional validation and integration of multi-omics data. This includes the identification as well as characterization of molecular origins of tumor-associated and tumor-specific peptides, including peptides derived from cryptic transcripts, somatic mutations, and oncogenic fusion genes. We examine how antigen processing, peptide loading, and HLA expression are modulated in different tumor entities and how these changes shape the landscape of visible targets for T cells. Aiming to bridge discovery and application, we combine high sensitivity immunopeptidomics with orthogonal functional assays to determine immunogenic and therapeutically relevant MHC-presented antigens.
We recently initiated a project to integrate DNAJB1-PRKACA fusion gene-derived neoantigens with the systematic identification and validation of metabolically essential target antigens in fibrolamellar carcinoma.
