Name: Helle Rus Povlsen
Project Title: Development of Immunoinformatics prediction methods for improved rational identification of T cell epitopes
Group: Immunoinformatics and Machine Learning
Supervisor(s): Morten Nielsen and Leon Eyrich Jessen
Project Description:
The main object of this project is to describe the mechanism with which T-cells distinguish between peptides presented by antigen presenting cells. We strive to understand what determines the T-cell specificity and decode this information to predict what part of an antigen will most likely elicit an immune response.
Perspective:
Understanding the mechanisms that drive T-cell specificity will guide the development of vaccines and therapeutics. There potential is for medicine to be designed for individually for each patient to optimize treatment prospects and reduce adverse effects. Most recently, the introduction of CAR-T cell therapies against cancer has shown promising results, but at a very high risk. With a T-cell epitope prediction tool we may eliminate the risk of auto-immune responses.