Classification of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) supertypes

Identification of new antigenic peptides, derived from infectious agents or cancer cells, which bind to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I and II molecules, is of importance for the development of new effective vaccines capable of activating the cellular arm of the immune response. However, the barrier to the development of peptide-based vaccines with maximum population coverage is that the restricting HLA genes are extremely polymorphic resulting in a vast diversity of peptide-binding HLA specificities and a low population coverage for any given peptide-HLA specificity. One way to reduce this complexity is to group thousands of different HLA molecules into several so-called HLA supertypes: a classification that refers to a group of HLA alleles with largely overlapping peptide binding specificities. In this chapter, we focus on the state-of-the-art classification of HLA supertypes including HLA-I supertypes and HLA-II supertypes and their application in development of peptide-based vaccines.