Deep motif deconvolution of HLA-II peptidomes for robust class II epitope predictions

CD4 T cells are key for priming and regulating immune recognition of infected and cancer cells, but predictions of class II epitopes have limited accuracy. We combined unbiased Mass Spectrometry-based HLA-II peptidomics with a novel motif deconvolution algorithm to profile and analyze a total of 99265 unique HLA-II ligands. Our work demonstrates substantial improvement in the definition of HLA-II binding motifs and enhanced accuracy in class II epitope predictions.