Filtering Commands

pVACbind currently offers two filters: a binding filter and a top score filter.

These filters are always run automatically as part of the pVACbind pipeline using default cutoffs.

All filters can also be run manually on the filtered.tsv file to narrow the results down further, or they can be run on the all_epitopes.tsv file to apply different filtering thresholds.

The binding filter is used to remove neoantigen candidates that do not meet desired peptide:MHC binding criteria. The top score filter is used to select the most promising peptide candidate for each variant. Multiple candidate peptides from a single somatic variant can be caused by multiple peptide lengths, registers, HLA alleles, and transcript annotations.

Further details on each of these filters is provided below.

Note

The default values for filtering thresholds are suggestions only. While they are based on review of the literature and consultation with our clinical and immunology colleagues, your specific use case will determine the appropriate values.

Binding Filter

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usage: pvacbind binding_filter [-h] [-b BINDING_THRESHOLD]
                               [--binding-percentile-threshold BINDING_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD]
                               [--immunogenicity-percentile-threshold IMMUNOGENICITY_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD]
                               [--presentation-percentile-threshold PRESENTATION_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD]
                               [--percentile-threshold-strategy {conservative,exploratory}]
                               [-m {lowest,median}] [-a]
                               input_file output_file

Filter variants processed by IEDB by binding score.

positional arguments:
  input_file            The all_epitopes.tsv or filtered.tsv pVACseq report
                        file to filter.
  output_file           Output .tsv file containing list of filtered epitopes
                        based on binding affinity.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b BINDING_THRESHOLD, --binding-threshold BINDING_THRESHOLD
                        Report only epitopes where the mutant allele has ic50
                        binding scores below this value. (default: 500)
  --binding-percentile-threshold BINDING_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD
                        Report only epitopes where the mutant allele has a
                        binding percentile rank below this value. (default:
                        2.0)
  --immunogenicity-percentile-threshold IMMUNOGENICITY_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD
                        Report only epitopes where the mutant allele has a
                        immunogenicity percentile rank below this value.
                        (default: 2.0)
  --presentation-percentile-threshold PRESENTATION_PERCENTILE_THRESHOLD
                        Report only epitopes where the mutant allele has a
                        presentation percentile rank below this value.
                        (default: 2.0)
  --percentile-threshold-strategy {conservative,exploratory}
                        Specify the candidate inclusion strategy. The
                        'conservative' option requires a candidate to pass
                        BOTH the binding threshold and percentile threshold
                        (default). The 'exploratory' option requires a
                        candidate to pass EITHER the binding threshold or the
                        percentile threshold. (default: conservative)
  -m {lowest,median}, --top-score-metric {lowest,median}
                        The ic50 scoring metric to use when filtering epitopes
                        by binding-threshold or minimum fold change. lowest:
                        Use the Best MT IC50 Score, Corresponding Fold Change,
                        and Best MT Percentile (i.e. use the lowest MT ic50
                        binding score, orresponding fold change of all chosen
                        prediction methods, and lowest MT percentile). median:
                        Use the Median MT IC50 Score, Median Fold Change, and
                        Median MT Percentile i.e. use the median MT ic50
                        binding score, fold change, and MT percentile of all
                        chosen prediction methods). (default: median)
  -a, --allele-specific-binding-thresholds
                        Use allele-specific binding thresholds. To print the
                        allele-specific binding thresholds run `pvacbind
                        allele_specific_cutoffs`. If an allele does not have a
                        special threshold value, the `--binding-threshold`
                        value will be used. (default: False)

The binding filter filters out variants that don’t pass the chosen binding threshold. The user can chose whether to apply this filter to the lowest or the median binding affinity score by setting the --top-score-metric flag. The lowest binding affinity score is recorded in the Best IC50 Score column and represents the lowest ic50 score of all prediction algorithms that were picked during the previous pVACseq run. The median binding affinity score is recorded in the Median IC50 Score column and corresponds to the median ic50 score of all prediction algorithms used to create the report. Be default, the binding filter runs on the median binding affinity. An additional --top-score-metric2 flag allows the user to choose whether to use IC50 or Percentile scores. By default, IC50 is used.

When the --allele-specific-binding-thresholds flag is set, binding cutoffs specific to each prediction’s HLA allele are used instead of the value set via the --binding-threshold parameters. For HLA alleles where no allele-specific binding threshold is available, the binding threshold is used as a fallback. Alleles with allele-specific threshold as well as the value of those thresholds can be printed by executing the pvacbind allele_specific_cutoffs command.

In addition to being able to filter on the IC50 score columns, the binding filter also offers the ability to filter on the percentile score using the --percentile-threshold parameter. When the --top-score-metric is set to lowest, this threshold is applied to the Best Percentile column. When it is set to median, the threshold is applied to the Median Percentile column.

When the --percentile-threshold flag is set, the candidate inclusion strategy can be specified by using the --percentile-threshold-strategy parameter. The parameter has two options conservative (default) and exploratory. The ‘conservative’ option requires a candidate to pass BOTH the binding threshold and percentile threshold, while the ‘exploratory’ option requires a candidate to pass EITHER the binding threshold or percentile threshold.

By default, entries with NA values will be included in the output. This behavior can be turned off by using the --exclude-NAs flag.

Top Score Filter

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usage: pvacbind top_score_filter [-h] [-m {lowest,median}]
                                 [-m2 TOP_SCORE_METRIC2]
                                 input_file output_file

Pick the best neoepitope for each variant

positional arguments:
  input_file            The final report .tsv file to filter.
  output_file           Output .tsv file containing only the list of the top
                        epitope per variant.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -m {lowest,median}, --top-score-metric {lowest,median}
                        The kind of scoring metric to use for determining the
                        top scoring peptide and for sorting. lowest: Use the
                        best MT IC50 Score, Percentile, Binding Percentile,
                        Immunogenicity Percentile and/or Presentation
                        Percentile. median: Use the median MT IC50 Score,
                        Percentile, Binding Percentile, Immunogenicity
                        Percentile and/or Presentation Percentile. Which
                        scoring metrics to consider it controlled by the
                        --top-score-metric2 parameter. (default: median)
  -m2 TOP_SCORE_METRIC2, --top-score-metric2 TOP_SCORE_METRIC2
                        Which metrics to consider when determining the top
                        scoring peptide. All listed metrics will be rank
                        scored and the sum of those rank scores will be used.
                        Whether the lowest or median is considered for each
                        metric is controlled by the --top-score-metric
                        parameter. This parameter is also used to control the
                        sorting criteria for the variants in the output report
                        evaluated in the order provided. (default: ['ic50',
                        'combined_percentile'])

This filter picks the top epitope for a variant. By default the --top-score-metric option is set to median which will apply this filter to the Median MT Score column and pick the epitope with the lowest median mutant ic50 score for each variant. If the --top-score-metric option is set to lowest, the Best MT Score column is instead used to make this determination.