Patent ID: 7879571

Claim:
A method for ranking the relative immunogenicity of a first protein and at least one additional protein, comprising the steps of: (a) preparing a first pepset from a first protein and preparing at least one additional pepset from each of said at least one additional protein; (b) obtaining from a single human blood source a solution comprising dendritic cells and a solution of naïve CD4+ T-cells; (c) differentiating said dendritic cells to produce a solution of differentiated dendritic cells; (d) combining said solution of differentiated dendritic cells and said naïve CD4+ T-cells with each peptide in said first pepset, individually; and separately (e) combining said solution of differentiated dendritic cells and said naïve CD4+ T-cells with each peptide in each of said pepsets, individually from said at least one additional protein; (f) measuring proliferation of said T-cells in said steps (d) and (e), to determine the responses to peptides in each of said first and said additional pepsets; (g) compiling the responses of said T-cells in step (f) for said first protein and said at least one additional protein; (h) determining the structure value of said compiled responses of step (g) for said first protein and said at least one additional protein using a formula for calculating total variation distance to the uniform or entropy of the distribution; and (i) comparing the structure value obtained for said first protein with the structure value for said at least one additional protein to determine the relative immunogenicity ranking of said first protein and said at least one additional protein.