Rational Design of Peptide Vaccines against Multiple Types of Human Papillomavirus

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) occurs in many types, some of which cause cervical, genital, and other cancers. While vaccination is available against the major cancer-causing HPV types, many others are not covered by these preventive measures. Herein, we present a bioinformatics study for the designing of multivalent peptide vaccines against multiple HPV types as an alternative strategy to the virus-like particle vaccines being used now. Our technique of rational design of peptide vaccines is expected to ensure stability of the vaccine against many cycles of mutational changes, elicit immune response, and negate autoimmune possibilities. Using the L1 capsid protein sequences, we identified several peptides for potential vaccine design for HPV 16, 18, 33, 35, 45, and 11 types. Although there are concerns about the epitope-binding affinities for the peptides identified in this process, the technique indicates possibilities of multivalent, adjuvanted, peptide vaccines against a wider range of HPV types, and tailor-made different combinations of the peptides to address frequency variations of types over different population groups as required for prophylaxis and at lower cost than are in use at the present time.

Computer-Assisted and Data Driven Approaches for Surveillance, Drug Discovery, and Vaccine Design for the Zika Virus

“…The simplicity of this method allowed the authors to predict well conserved peptide regions for over 500 H5N1 neuraminidase proteins and in excess of 400 H1N1 neuraminidase proteins [60]. Furthermore, they were also successful in predicting epitopes among 438 rotavirus VP7 surface glycoprotein and for more than 200 sequences of HPV L1 capsid protein [61]. Subsequently, the conserved peptide regions are superimposed on an average solvent accessibility profile of the same protein.…”

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

“…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. [36,37], rotavirus [38], human papilloma virus [39] and Zika virus [40] and arrived in each instance with a suggested library of possible vaccine candidates to be tested out in the wet-labs. The flowchart diagram (Figure 2) shows the protocol we have followed in this process, which, in brief, is as follows: acids to a descriptor number (see Ref [41] for method, Ref [38] for application).…”

A novel approach to Peptide Vaccine Design for Ebola virus

“…The availability of adequate viral sequence data and novel programming techniques that bypasses alignment procedures have enabled development of new and fast protocols for in silico approaches to peptide vaccine design. We have used these novel alignment-free techniques and protocols ( Fig.1) to design in silico peptide vaccine libraries for Influenza [14,15], Rotavirus [16], Human Papilloma virus [17] and Zika virus [18], but the methods require more robust software approaches; we are in this paper very briefly reporting one such modification to our standard approach; another approach that separates viral sequences originating from different geographical areas using principal component analysis (PCA) and self-organizing maps (SOM), which holds promise of good separation between different segments also, has been recently communicated [19]. We use the Ebola virus (EBOV) as an example for application of the modified technique.…”