MINIMAL PHENOTYPE PANELS - A METHOD FOR ACHIEVING MAXIMUM POPULATION COVERAGE WITH A MINIMUM OF HLA ANTIGENS

Vaccination with peptides that induce a specific immune response is a potential prophylactic or therapeutic strategy against viral infection s and tumors. Because of the extensive polymorphism of the HLA loci, s ynthetic peptide vaccines muse consist of a cocktail of peptides that bind specifically to different HLA molecules. Such cocktails should be optimized for the target population as each population has its specif ic KLA gene frequencies. To achieve maximum population coverage with a minimum number of peptides, information is needed on the ranking of t he most frequent HLA phenotypes. We introduce the minimal phenotype pa nel, which is the smallest combination of HLA antigens selected so tha t the proportion of individuals in a population that express at least one of the antigens in the panel exceeds a desired minimum value. We d eveloped a method for assembling minimal phenotype panels based on kno wn HLA class I gene frequencies. We give an example based on a set of 2446 well-defined HLA-typed, random, healthy, unrelated, Dutch Caucaso id individuals. In addition, we discuss the possibility of assembling minimal phenotype panels based on two-locus haplotypes, which enables the assembly of phenotype panels from the antigens of both loci. (C) A merican Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, 1996.