Determining peptide binding motifs for the SLA-2*0401 Class I MHC and identification of epitopes from foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) P1 protein. (43.16)

To date, little is known about the binding specificities for Swine Leukocyte Antigens (SLA) compared to the enormous amount of data available for the Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). The increase in immunology and infectious disease research using pigs as an experimental model would benefit from an increased understanding of SLA class I peptide presentation. In this work, we have determined the binding motifs for the SLA-2*0401 molecule, a commonly expressed allele in swine and the PK13 and PK15 cell lines. These peptide motifs were identified using a prediction model developed for the Class I MHC of human and applied to SLA-2*0401. With this, we derived 10 candidate T cell epitopes from the P1 region of the FMDV strain A24 and two more from Ebola virus and V. cholera for comparison. These candidate peptides were tested for binding SLA-2*0401 using an ELISA based protein association assay developed previously for HLA-I molecules. Five of the ten predicted FMDV peptides bound SLA-2*0401 in vitro. These data are now being applied to the analysis of porcine T cell responses to FMDV infection and vaccination.