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Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) with pandemic potential is a major worldwide threat to public health. However, vaccine development for this pathogen lags behind as immunity associated with protection is currently largely unknown. In this study, an immunoinformatics-driven gen...

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Autores principales: Shi, Jiandong, Zhang, Jing, Li, Sijin, Sun, Jing, Teng, Yumei, Wu, Meini, Li, Jianfan, Li, Yanhan, Hu, Ningzhu, Wang, Haixuan, Hu, Yunzhang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26641892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144475
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author Shi, Jiandong
Zhang, Jing
Li, Sijin
Sun, Jing
Teng, Yumei
Wu, Meini
Li, Jianfan
Li, Yanhan
Hu, Ningzhu
Wang, Haixuan
Hu, Yunzhang
author_facet Shi, Jiandong
Zhang, Jing
Li, Sijin
Sun, Jing
Teng, Yumei
Wu, Meini
Li, Jianfan
Li, Yanhan
Hu, Ningzhu
Wang, Haixuan
Hu, Yunzhang
author_sort Shi, Jiandong
collection PubMed
description Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) with pandemic potential is a major worldwide threat to public health. However, vaccine development for this pathogen lags behind as immunity associated with protection is currently largely unknown. In this study, an immunoinformatics-driven genome-wide screening strategy of vaccine targets was performed to thoroughly screen the vital and effective dominant immunogens against MERS-CoV. Conservancy and population coverage analysis of the epitopes were done by the Immune Epitope Database. The results showed that the nucleocapsid (N) protein of MERS-CoV might be a better protective immunogen with high conservancy and potential eliciting both neutralizing antibodies and T-cell responses compared with spike (S) protein. Further, the B-cell, helper T-cell and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes were screened and mapped to the N protein. A total of 15 linear and 10 conformal B-cell epitopes that may induce protective neutralizing antibodies were obtained. Additionally, a total of 71 peptides with 9-mer core sequence were identified as helper T-cell epitopes, and 34 peptides were identified as CTL epitopes. Based on the maximum HLA binding alleles, top 10 helper T-cell epitopes and CTL epitopes that may elicit protective cellular immune responses against MERS-CoV were selected as MERS vaccine candidates. Population coverage analysis showed that the putative helper T-cell epitopes and CTL epitopes could cover the vast majority of the population in 15 geographic regions considered where vaccine would be employed. The B- and T-cell stimulation potentials of the screened epitopes is to be further validated for their efficient use as vaccines against MERS-CoV. Collectively, this study provides novel vaccine target candidates and may prompt further development of vaccines against MERS-CoV and other emerging infectious diseases.
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spelling pubmed-46715822015-12-10 Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases Shi, Jiandong Zhang, Jing Li, Sijin Sun, Jing Teng, Yumei Wu, Meini Li, Jianfan Li, Yanhan Hu, Ningzhu Wang, Haixuan Hu, Yunzhang PLoS One Research Article Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) with pandemic potential is a major worldwide threat to public health. However, vaccine development for this pathogen lags behind as immunity associated with protection is currently largely unknown. In this study, an immunoinformatics-driven genome-wide screening strategy of vaccine targets was performed to thoroughly screen the vital and effective dominant immunogens against MERS-CoV. Conservancy and population coverage analysis of the epitopes were done by the Immune Epitope Database. The results showed that the nucleocapsid (N) protein of MERS-CoV might be a better protective immunogen with high conservancy and potential eliciting both neutralizing antibodies and T-cell responses compared with spike (S) protein. Further, the B-cell, helper T-cell and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes were screened and mapped to the N protein. A total of 15 linear and 10 conformal B-cell epitopes that may induce protective neutralizing antibodies were obtained. Additionally, a total of 71 peptides with 9-mer core sequence were identified as helper T-cell epitopes, and 34 peptides were identified as CTL epitopes. Based on the maximum HLA binding alleles, top 10 helper T-cell epitopes and CTL epitopes that may elicit protective cellular immune responses against MERS-CoV were selected as MERS vaccine candidates. Population coverage analysis showed that the putative helper T-cell epitopes and CTL epitopes could cover the vast majority of the population in 15 geographic regions considered where vaccine would be employed. The B- and T-cell stimulation potentials of the screened epitopes is to be further validated for their efficient use as vaccines against MERS-CoV. Collectively, this study provides novel vaccine target candidates and may prompt further development of vaccines against MERS-CoV and other emerging infectious diseases. Public Library of Science 2015-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4671582/ /pubmed/26641892 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144475 Text en © 2015 Shi et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Shi, Jiandong
Zhang, Jing
Li, Sijin
Sun, Jing
Teng, Yumei
Wu, Meini
Li, Jianfan
Li, Yanhan
Hu, Ningzhu
Wang, Haixuan
Hu, Yunzhang
Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title_full Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title_fullStr Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title_full_unstemmed Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title_short Epitope-Based Vaccine Target Screening against Highly Pathogenic MERS-CoV: An In Silico Approach Applied to Emerging Infectious Diseases
title_sort epitope-based vaccine target screening against highly pathogenic mers-cov: an in silico approach applied to emerging infectious diseases
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26641892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144475
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