Design of cocktail peptide vaccine against Cytomegalovirus infection

OBJECTIVE(S): Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) remains a major morbidity and mortality cause in immuno suppressed patients. Therefore, significant effort has been made towards the development of a vaccine. In this study, the expression of the pp65 and gB fusion peptides and Fc domain of mouse IgG2a as a novel delivery system for selective uptake of antigens by antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in Pichia pastoris yeast system were studied. MATERIALS AND METHOD: In this study, four immune dominant sequences in pp65 protein and 3 immuno dominant sequences in gB protein were selected according to literature review. Peptide linker -GGGGS- was used for construction of fusion peptide. This fusion peptide was cloned in the pPICZαA expression vector and transfected into P. pastoris host cells. RESULTS: Dot blot and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) techniques showed that a high level of pp65-gB-Fc fusion peptide was expressed. CONCLUSION: This CMV pp65-gB-Fc fusion peptide could be a promising candidate for the development of a novel peptide vaccine.