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Canine spontaneous cancers may offer greater fidelity than rodent models in advancing clinical immunotherapies. Boxers in particular are distinguished as study subjects by their popularity, and high incidence of human‐relevant cancers. Further, the MHC class I allele DLA‐88*034:01, with a known motif, dominates the breed, facilitating discovery of shared CTL responses against mutation‐origin neoepitopes by standard prediction methods. We experimentally confirmed the allomorph's binding motif by developing an MHC surface stabilization assay. The assay validated four DLA‐88*034:01‐presented peptides from canine distemper virus, ubiquitously administered in routine vaccines, for positive controls in future CTL studies. In turn, these viral peptides substantiated motif‐based prediction for DLA‐88*034:01. The study adds new tools for studying neoepitope‐specific CTL in Boxers to foster canine comparative oncology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of effective immunotherapy for chemoresistant malignancies can be advanced by studies in spontaneous cancer models, such as the dog. A crucial first step, T‐cell epitope discovery, can be assisted by determination of binding motifs of common dog leukocyte antigen (DLA) class Ia allotypes. Boxers are popular, inbred dogs with increased risks of relevant target cancers and restricted MHC diversity. We sought to identify the motif of DLA‐88*034:01, a breed‐dominant allotype, to assist peptide prediction from tumor antigens. Mass spectrometry of eluted peptides showed a preference for nonamers with conserved amino acid preferences: basic at position (P)1; hydrophobic at P2; acidic at P4; histidine at P6; and phenylalanine at P9. This data should expedite finding epitopes restricted by this DLA‐88 allotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]