title: A sensitive fluorometric assay for quantitatively measuring specific peptide binding to HLA class I and class II molecules.
abstract: A sensitive, highly reproducible assay was developed for measuring binding of peptides to various HLA class I and II alleles. The assay is based on competition for binding to HLA between a peptide of interest and a fluorescent labelled standard peptide. This mixture is incubated with HLA to obtain equilibrium binding, and subsequently separated on an HPLC size-exclusion column in (i) a protein fraction containing HLA and bound peptide and (ii) a free peptide fraction. Each assay uses only 100 fmol labelled peptide and approximately 10 pmol of HLA. The analytical system contains an autosampler that samples from 96-well microtiter plates. Injections and data recording/evaluation is fully automated. Typical analysis time is 10-12 min per sample. The fluorescence in the HLA-bound peptide and free peptide containing fractions is measured on-line. The ratios of fluorescence signal in protein and peptide fractions at various concentrations of the peptide of interest are determined. IC50 values are calculated from the binding curve as obtained by curve fitting of the data. Here we show results for peptide binding to HLA-DR1 and -DR17 molecules purified from detergent solubilized cell lysates. and for recombinant HLA-A*0201 and HLA-A*0301 expressed in E. coli. The assay reported is sensitive and reproducible. It is non-radioactive and is non-labor intensive due to the high degree of automation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunohematology and Blood Bank, Leiden University Hospital, Netherlands. ihbsecr@euronet.nl
authors.forename: T H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Ottenhoff
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Geluk
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Toebes
authors.forename: W E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Benckhuijsen
authors.forename: K E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: van Meijgaarden
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Drijfhout
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D005470:Fluorometry; D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I / Q000378:metabolism*; D000949:Histocompatibility Antigens Class II / Q000378:metabolism*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010455:Peptides / Q000378:metabolism*; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I; D000949:Histocompatibility Antigens Class II; D010455:Peptides; D011994:Recombinant Proteins