Abstract
Epitope-based vaccines provide a new strategy for prophylactic and therapeutic application of pathogen-specific immunity. A critical requirement of this strategy is the identification and selection of T-cell epitopes that act as vaccine targets. This study describes current methodologies for the selection process, with dengue virus as a model system. A combination of publicly available bioinformatics algorithms and computational tools are used to screen and select antigen sequences as potential T-cell epitopes of supertype human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles. The selected sequences are tested for biological function by their activation of T-cells of HLA transgenic mice and of pathogen infected subjects. This approach provides an experimental basis for the design of pathogen specific, T-cell epitope-based vaccines that are targeted to majority of the genetic variants of the pathogen, and are effective for a broad range of differences in human leukocyte antigens among the global human population.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 141-147 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Cellular Immunology |
Volume | 244 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2006 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Altered-ligand effect
- Bioinformatics
- Conserved sequences
- Epitope-based vaccines
- Immune system
- Immunological hotspots
- Information entropy
- Pathogens
- Supertypes
- T-cell epitopes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology