The outbreak of epidemic viral infections is tightly connected to a lacking immunity in the affected population. However, as certain viruses share certain genes, the mechanism of PIRCHE can be applied to identify overlaps between existing viruses and vaccines. Individual responses against new diseases can be predicted and compared within the population. This allows to understand how to induce immunity in order to respond quicker to new virus types.
As proof of concept, the UMC Utrecht started a project in collaboration with MATCHIS and PIRCHE to explore SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides and the capability of human MHC proteins to present these peptides to T cells. In a first step, the overlap between known vaccines and SARS-CoV-2 is explored, which might explain different reactions among patients with different immunization history. Subsequently, the prevalence of severe COVID in the Dutch cohort of stem cell donors will be investigated and mapped to specific HLA haplotypes. Finally, it is planned to correlate SARS-CoV-2-PIRCHE scores with severity of COVID infections in large scale databases, which might require additional collaborators to join.
