Epidemics and Peptide Vaccine Response: A Brief Review

Abstract

We briefly review the situations arising out of epidemics that erupt rather suddenly, threatening life and livelihoods of humans. Ebola, Zika and the Nipah virus outbreaks are recent examples where the viral epidemics have led to considerably high degree of fatalities or debilitating consequences. The problems are accentuated by a lack of drugs or vaccines effective against the new and emergent viruses, and the inordinate amount of temporal and financial resources that are required to combat the novel pathogens. Progress in computational, biological and informational sciences have made it possible to consider design of synthetic vaccines that can be rapidly developed and deployed to help stem the damages. In this review, we consider the pros and cons of this new paradigm and suggest a new system where the manufacturing process can be decentralized to provide more targeted vaccines to meet the urgent needs of protection in case of a rampaging epidemic.

Current Perspective of Zika Virus and Vaccine Development

“…In another technological approach, Nandy et al 101,102 proposed setting up peptide vaccine labs and production centres at selected locations around the globe. While we have covered in many reviews the different approaches to designing peptide vaccines against pandemic viruses like Zika and COVID-19, several issues need to be resolved in the wet-lab environment before such vaccines can be safely and successfully marketed.…”

Towards Personalized Vaccines—Tailoring Peptide Vaccines to Demographic Groups and Individuals

“…The case for peptide vaccines against viral epidemics is not as strong [34,35]. Generally, the community first facing the epidemic is the front-runner in the analyses and research for producing the vaccine which leads to T-cell and B-cell proliferation in case of strong binding.…”

New Computational Approach for Peptide Vaccine Design Against SARS-COV-2

“…So, it would be prudent to determine such regions and design vaccines that can elicit anti-viral response. Such ideas led to the concept of “reverse vaccinology” and “vaccinomics” as in Rappouli ( 2001 ) and Poland et al ( 2011 , 2016 ), and the development of peptide vaccine models (Purcell et al 2007 ; Nandy et al 2018 ; Dudek et al 2010 ). These advancements led to design of remote and individual specific vaccine that hold the promise of development of community-specific vaccines by discarding the “one size fits all” paradigm prevalent in current vaccine industry.…”