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REVIEW article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Vaccines and Molecular Therapeutics

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1690101

MAPPs Assays For Non-Clinical Immunogenicity Risk Assessment: Best Practices Recommended By The European Immunogenicity Platform

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Immunogenicity and Mechanistic Immunology, Biomedical Research, Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland
  • 2Centre for Functional Assays and Screening, Research and Early Development, Novo Nordisk A/S, Måløv, Denmark
  • 3Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics and Metabolism, Pfizer Research and Development, Pfizer Inc., Andover, United States
  • 4In Vitro Immunology (ImmunXperts), IQVIA laboratories, Gosselies, Belgium
  • 5Bioassay Department, Babraham Research Campus, Abzena Ltd, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 6Early Development Services, Lonza Biologics Plc, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 7Roche Innovation Center, Roche Pharmaceutical Sciences, Basel, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The use of the MAPPs (Major histocompatibility complex Associated Peptide Proteomics) assay by pharmaceutical companies, service providers, and academic laboratories is rapidly increasing, attesting to its increasingly pivotal role in biotherapeutic drug candidate design, selection, and mechanistic investigations. Implementation of the MAPPs assay is labor-intensive, necessitating a high level of expertise. Differences observed in protocols established by laboratories may lead to considerable variability in data quality, limiting inter-laboratory comparisons. To address these challenges, the Non-Clinical Immunogenicity Risk Assessment working group (NCIRA) of the European Immunogenicity Platform (EIP) sought to provide comprehensive recommendations for establishing robust workflows that will ensure robust data and meaningful interpretation. Recognizing the improbability of the complete harmonization of protocols, we aimed to define and propose a set of best practices to maximize confidence in the data generated by laboratories. The work presented here reviews the pitfalls and limitations of the assay, proposes strategies to enhance assay sensitivity and robustness, and outlines approaches for data analysis, reporting, and interpretation. Additionally, the potential of the MAPPs assay for future applications such as clinical studies is discussed. By proposing measures and controls that support the development of high-quality MAPPs assays, we seek to improve their reproducibility and reliability for drug candidates' nonclinical immunogenicity risk evaluation.

Keywords: MAPPS, Immunogenicity, Risk Assessment, Candidate ranking, harmonization strategy

Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 16 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Karle, Kopp, Seward, Tourdot, Ackaert, Gutknecht, Cloake, Smith and Ducret. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Anette Christine Karle, anette.karle@novartis.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.