Computational Immune Proteomics Approach to Target COVID-19

Abstract

Progress of the omics platforms widens their application to diverse fields, including immunology. This enables a deeper level of knowledge and the provision of a huge amount of data for which management and fruitful integration with the past evidence requires a steadily growing computational effort. In light of this, immunoinformatics emerges as a new discipline placed in between the traditional lab-based investigations and the computational analysis of the biological data. Immunoinformatics make use of tailored bioinformatics tools and data repositories to facilitate the analysis of data from a plurality of disciplines and help drive novel research hypotheses and in silico screening investigations in a fast, reliable, and cost-effective manner. Such computational immunoproteomics studies may as well prepare and guide lab-based investigations, representing valuable technology for the investigation of novel pathogens, to tentatively evaluate specificity of diagnostic products, to forecast on potential adverse effects of vaccines and to reduce the use of animal models. The present manuscript provides an overview of the COVID-19 pandemic and reviews the state of the art of the omics technologies employed in fighting SARS-CoV-2 infections. A comprehensive description of the immunoinformatics approaches and its potential role in contrasting COVID-19 pandemics is provided.

Exploring peptide studies related to SARS-CoV to accelerate the development of novel therapeutic and prophylactic solutions against COVID-19

“…The progress of these Omics studies can be extrapolated to applications in many fields, including immunology. This supports a deeper level of knowledge and the provision of substantial data used in computational studies, namely immunoinformatics [ 140 ].…”

Food Safety Concerns in “COVID-19 Era”

“…Interestingly, aminoacidic sequence homologies confirm the genomic-based studies relative to the virus origin and evolution [28][29][30]. Moreover, epitopes prediction and peptide sequences alignment highlighted a list of peptide sequences with the potential of immune response stimulation [26,31,32], suggesting a partial protective immunity elicited by the previous exposure of humans to the animal coronaviruses, other than explaining, at least in part, the variable clinical manifestation recorded among the COVID-19 patients. Such information is of valuable importance for the clear definition of the SARS-CoV-2 immunogenicity and might also be implemented in the design of diagnostic tools capable of differential diagnosis and/or the sketch of a safe and efficient vaccinal formulation.…”

Immune profiles of a COVID-19 adolescent with mild symptoms and anti-viral antibody deficiency

“…It is reported to be involved in the onset of viral infection, replication, and dissemination within host cells [ 23 , 24 ]. Its immunogenic peptides have been computationally predicted [ 25 , 26 ], but not clinically validated. Our data thus provide direct evidence of its capacity to induce cellular immune response.…”