Novel Concepts for Drug Hypersensitivity Based on the Use of Long-Time Scale Molecular Dynamic Simulation

The discovery that several drug hypersensitivity reactions (DHRs) are associated with specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles has attracted increasing research interest. However, the underlying mechanisms of these HLA-induced DHRs remain unclear, especially for drug-induced immediate activation of T-cell clones (TCCs). Recently, a novel hypothesis involving partial detachment between self-peptide(s) and the HLA molecule (altered peptide-HLA (pHLA) model) has been proposed to explain these phenomena. In order to clarify this hypothesis, we performed long-timescale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We focused on HLA-B⁎57:01-restricted abacavir hypersensitivity reactions (AHRs), one of the most famous DHRs. One of the simulation results showed that this altered-pHLA model might be driven by an increase in the distance not only between HLA and self-peptides but also between the α1 and α2 helices of HLA. Our findings provide novel insights into abacavir-induced immediate activation of TCCs and these findings might also be applied to other DHRs, such as HLA-B⁎58:01-restricted allopurinol hypersensitivity reactions.