Professor Nicola Ternette

Chair of Antigen Discovery

Cell Signalling and Immunology, School of Life Sciences

Nicola Ternette

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Biography

Professor Nicola Ternette is Professor of Antigen Discovery, where she leads the Antigen Discovery Group. She is elected chair of the HUPO Immunopeptidomics Initiative, driving efforts to map the full diversity of HLA-presented antigens across health and disease.

Professor Ternette studied Physics and Biochemistry at the Universities of Bonn, Greifswald, and Bochum in Germany, before completing her PhD on DNA vaccines for respiratory viruses at the Institute for Molecular and Medical Virology in Bochum. She then moved to the University of Oxford, where she specialized in HLA-associated peptidomics and the identification of viral and tumour antigens using advanced mass spectrometry techniques. In 2015, she founded the Antigen Discovery Group, which has since become a leader in decoding how disease and evolution shape the HLA peptidome. Since 2024, the group is based at the School of Life Sciences in Dundee, a global centre for mass spectrometry-driven research.

Research

The Ternette Group focuses on decoding the antigenic landscape that shapes immune recognition in infection, cancer, and autoimmunity. Central to our research is the use of high-resolution mass spectrometry to identify HLA-presented peptides which is key to understanding adaptive immune recognition.

The group has developed deep expertise in immunopeptidomics, leveraging ML-assisted algorithms and in-house bioinformatics tools to improve spectral interpretation and uncover novel targetable antigens, including tumour-specific antigens. Our work spans diverse areas: from profiling immunopeptidomes in viral infection and cancer to characterising self-antigens involved in autoimmune diseases, and understanding drug-immune recognition. A key interest of the group lies in understanding how genomic variation and evolutionary pressure shape the MHC repertoire in vertebrates.

By refining computational and experimental methods for antigen discovery, the Ternette Group bridges fundamental immunology with translational applications in precision medicine.

Schematic showing the different six areas of research undertaken by the Antigen Discovery Group. 1. HLAp discovery Cancer Infection Autoimmunity. 2. Anti-Drug Antibodies. 3. ML-assisted non-canonical peptide identification. 4. Partnering for Antigen Translation 5. Specificity of TCRs and TCR-like molecules. 6. Effect of treatment on immune visibility

Publications

Full publication record

People in my lab

  • Chloe Shepherd
  • Dr. Hanqing Liao
View full research profile and publications