Design of a multi-epitope vaccine against cervical cancer using immunoinformatics approaches

Abstract

Cervical cancer, caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), is the fourth most common type of cancer among women worldwide. While HPV prophylactic vaccines are available, they have no therapeutic effects and do not clear up existing infections. This study aims to design a therapeutic vaccine against cervical cancer using reverse vaccinology. In this study, the E6 and E7 oncoproteins from HPV16 were chosen as the target antigens for epitope prediction. Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) and helper T lymphocytes (HTL) epitopes were predicted, and the best epitopes were selected based on antigenicity, allergenicity, and toxicity. The final vaccine construct was composed of the selected epitopes, along with the appropriate adjuvant and linkers. The multi-epitope vaccine was evaluated in terms of physicochemical properties, antigenicity, and allergenicity. The tertiary structure of the vaccine construct was predicted. Furthermore, several analyses were also carried out, including molecular docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and in silico cloning of the vaccine construct. The results showed that the final proposed vaccine could be considered an effective therapeutic vaccine for HPV; however, in vitro and in vivo experiments are required to validate the efficacy of this vaccine candidate.

An immunoinformatics study: designing multivalent T-cell epitope vaccine against canine circovirus

“…As, these proteins are highly conserved, are involved in viral pathogenesis, and can help to generate immune response, they can be a good target for identifying epitopes that could be used to design a vaccine construct which can help protect the dog population from potentially lethal canine circovirus infections [13][14][15]. Such in silico studies have been previously performed to design vaccine construct against dengue, Candida auris, human cytomegalovirus, SARS-CoV-2, Lassa virus, human papillomavirus, cervical cancer, and hepatitis C virus [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In our study, various immunoinformatic tools were used to design a potential vaccine construct against canine circovirus.…”

In silico designing of a novel epitope-based candidate vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae with introduction of a new domain of PepO as adjuvant

“…The principal drawback of epitope vaccines is that they could be degraded quickly by proteinase in the body, making them hard to be recognized by immune cell receptors [ 103 , 104 ]. One of the approaches recommended for enhancing the immune responses elicited by epitope vaccines is to utilize adjuvants in the vaccine constructs [ 104 ]. In recent decades, TLR agonists have been broadly examined as candidate adjuvants for vaccine constructs [ 38 ].…”

“…The theoretical pI of the ODAC vaccine was 5.29 which indicates the ODAC is basic in nature. The molecular weight of the construct was 41.93 kDa, which is ideal because the purification of protein constructs with Mws fewer than 110 kDa is faster and easier [ 104 , 112 ]. The half-life (T1/2) of the engineered vaccine was computed to be 30 h, > 20 h, and more than 10 h, in mammalian reticulocytes, yeast, and E. coli , respectively.…”

A Systematic Immuno-Informatic Approach to Design a Multiepitope-Based Vaccine Against Emerging Multiple Drug Resistant Serratia marcescens

“…3Drefine server is based in optimization of the hydrogen bonding network and composite physics and knowledge-based force fields to give atomic-level energy minimization using the MESHI molecular modeling framework ( 85 , 86 ). The validation process was performed using the PROCHECK’s Ramachandran plot analysis ( ) ( 87 ) that analyzes the geometry of the refined vaccine construct and predict the best stereochemical quality of the construct ( 88 ); ProSA ( ) ( 89 ) that computes the overall quality score (Z score) for a specific 3D structure ( 90 ); and ERRAT server ( ) ( 91 ) that analyzes the statistics of non-bonded interactions between different atom types ( 92 ).…”