Stephanie Hoppe, PhD
PhD Student, then Postdoctoral Scientist
© dkfz.de
Scientific CV
Jul - Nov 2015
Postdoctoral scientist, Junior Research Group Immunotherapy and Immunoprevention, DKFZ, Heidelberg
2010 - 2015
PhD student, Junior Research Group Immunotherapy and -prevention, DKFZ, Heidelberg
2008 - 2010
MSc Molecular Biosciences, Major Infectious Diseases, Ruprecht-Karls-University, Heidelberg
Oct 2009 - Feb 2010
ERASMUS exchange term, MSc Biomedicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
2005 - 2008
BSc Biology, Philipps-University, Marburg
Research Project
Identification of HPV16 T cell epitopes for HLA-A3, HLA-A11 and HLA-A24
The viral oncoproteins E6 and E7 are consistently expressed and required for maintenance of the malignant phenotype in human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers. This makes them ideal targets for immunotherapy. It is known that cell-mediated immune responses are needed for clearing HPV infection. Peptide vaccination specifically elicits cytotoxic T cells (CTL), but is limited by the fact that T cell epitopes are HLA-restricted. A therapeutic vaccine that is applicable to everyone without prior HLA typing needs to contain epitopes for all HLA (super)types.
In this context, the goal of this project was to identify peptides for the HLA-A3/A11 and A24 supertypes from the most common oncogenic HPV type, HPV-16. To this end, HPV-16 E6 and E7 epitopes were predicted. Peptide binding assays for the above mentioned supertypes were performed, as well as specific immunoprecipitations. HPV-16 transformed cell lines of the respective HLA background were analyzed for prospective epitope presence by our targeted mass spectrometry approach. Identified peptides were tested for immunogenicity and their ability to induce CTL.
Resulting Publications
Performance evaluation of MHC class-I binding prediction tools based on an experimentally validated MHC-peptide binding data set.
Bonsack M*, Hoppe S*, Winter J, Tichy D, Zeller C, Küpper MD, Schitter EC, Blatnik R, Riemer AB. * Equal contributors.
Cancer Immunology Research 2019, 7(5): 719-736.
A targeted LC-MS strategy for low-abundant HLA class-I-presented peptide detection identifies novel human papillomavirus T-cell epitopes.
Blatnik R*, Mohan N*, Bonsack M*, Falkenby LG, Hoppe S, Josef K, Steinbach A, Becker S, Nadler WM, Rucevic M, Larsen MR, Salek M, Riemer AB. * Equal contributors.
Proteomics 2018, 18(11): e1700390.
ERAP1 overexpression in HPV-induced malignancies: a possible novel immune evasion mechanism.
Steinbach A, Winter J, Reuschenbach M, Blatnik R, Klevenz A, Bertrand M, Hoppe S, von Knebel Doeberitz M, Grabowska AK, Riemer AB.
OncoImmunology 2017, 6(7): e1336594.
Peptide processing is critical for T-cell memory inflation and may be optimized to improve immune protection by CMV-based vaccine vectors.
Dekhtiarenko I, Ratts RB, Blatnik R, Lee LN, Fischer S, Borkner L, Oduro JD, Marandu TF, Hoppe S, Ruzsics Z, Sonnemann JK, Mansouri M, Meyer C, Lemmermann NA, Holtappels R, Arens R, Klenerman P, Früh K, Reddehase MJ, Riemer AB, Cicin-Sain L.
PLoS Pathogens 2016, 12(12): e1006072.