A Peptide Microarray\nPlatform Approach for Discovery\nof Immunodominant Antibody Epitopes

Immunodominant epitope discovery platforms play an important\nrole\nin identifying novel biomarkers for effective immunotherapies and\ndiagnostics. Methods to analyze the B-cell repertoire have been improved\nboth experimentally and computationally. We developed an enhanced\npeptide microarray platform to discover and subsequently screen immunodominant\nepitopes. We utilized SARS-Cov-2 IgG positive and negative samples\nas a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the power of these improved peptide\nmicroarrays. The method identified significantly discriminant epitopes\nthat classify positive and negative samples with good performance\nboth as single peptides and in combination. We provide the assay conditions\nand parameters that justify the use of peptide microarrays in the\nselection of high-affinity epitopes, and we directly compare peptide\nperformance against proteins. The results suggest that this platform\ncan be used to confidently identify immunodominant antiviral epitopes\nwhile also serving as a useful tool for high-volume screening.