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Proof of principle for epitope-focused vaccine design.

ABSTRACT: Vaccines prevent infectious disease largely by inducing protective neutralizing antibodies against vulnerable epitopes. Several major pathogens have resisted traditional vaccine development, although vulnerable epitopes targeted by neutralizing antibodies have been identified for several such cases. Hence, new vaccine design methods to induce epitope-specific neutralizing antibodies are needed. Here we show, with a neutralization epitope from respiratory syncytial virus, that computational protein design can generate small, thermally and conformationally stable protein scaffolds that accurately mimic the viral epitope structure and induce potent neutralizing antibodies. These scaffolds represent promising leads for the research and development of a human respiratory syncytial virus vaccine needed to protect infants, young children and the elderly. More generally, the results provide proof of principle for epitope-focused and scaffold-based vaccine design, and encourage the evaluation and further development of these strategies for a variety of other vaccine targets, including antigenically highly variable pathogens such as human immunodeficiency virus and influenza.

SUBMITTER: Correia BE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4260937 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Proof of principle for epitope-focused vaccine design.

Correia Bruno E BE Bates John T JT Loomis Rebecca J RJ Baneyx Gretchen G Carrico Chris C Jardine Joseph G JG Rupert Peter P Correnti Colin C Kalyuzhniy Oleksandr O Vittal Vinayak V Connell Mary J MJ Stevens Eric E Schroeter Alexandria A Chen Man M Macpherson Skye S Serra Andreia M AM Adachi Yumiko Y Holmes Margaret A MA Li Yuxing Y Klevit Rachel E RE Graham Barney S BS Wyatt Richard T RT Baker David D Strong Roland K RK Crowe James E JE Johnson Philip R PR Schief William R WR

Nature 20140205 7491

Vaccines prevent infectious disease largely by inducing protective neutralizing antibodies against vulnerable epitopes. Several major pathogens have resisted traditional vaccine development, although vulnerable epitopes targeted by neutralizing antibodies have been identified for several such cases. Hence, new vaccine design methods to induce epitope-specific neutralizing antibodies are needed. Here we show, with a neutralization epitope from respiratory syncytial virus, that computational prote ...[more]

PMID: 24499818

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Project description:Leishmaniasis is a spectrum of diseases transmitted by sand fly vectors that deposit Leishmania spp. parasites in the host skin during blood feeding. Currently, available treatment options are limited, associated with high toxicity and emerging resistance. Even though a vaccine for human leishmaniasis is considered an achievable goal, to date we still do not have one available, a consequence (amongst other factors) of a lack of pre-clinical to clinical translatability. Pre-exposure to uninfected sand fly bites or immunization with defined sand fly salivary proteins was shown to negatively impact infection. Still, cross-protection reports are rare and dependent on the phylogenetic proximity of the sand fly species, meaning that the applicability of a sand fly saliva-based vaccine will be limited to a defined geography, one parasite species and one form of leishmaniasis. As a proof of principle of a future vector saliva-based pan-Leishmania vaccine, we engineered through a reverse vaccinology approach that maximizes translation to humans, a fusion protein consisting of immunogenic portions of PdSP15 and LJL143, sand fly salivary proteins demonstrated as potential vaccine candidates against cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis, respectively. The in silico analysis was validated ex vivo, through T cell proliferation experiments, proving that the fusion protein (administered as a DNA vaccine) maintained the immunogenicity of both PdSP15 and LJL143. Additionally, while no significant effect was detected in the context of L. major transmission by P. duboscqi, this DNA vaccine was defined as partially protective, in the context of L. major transmission by L. longipalpis sand flies. Importantly, a high IFNγ response alone was not enough to confer protection, that mainly correlated with low T cell mediated Leishmania-specific IL-4 and IL-10 responses, and consequently with high pro/anti-inflammatory cytokine ratios. Overall our immunogenicity data suggests that to design a potentially safe vector-based pan-Leishmania vaccine, without geographic restrictions and against all forms of leishmaniasis is an achievable goal. This is why we propose our approach as a proof-of principle, perhaps not only applicable to the anti-Leishmania vector-based vaccines' field, but also to other branches of knowledge that require the design of multi-epitope T cell vaccines with a higher potential for translation.

Project description:In this work we demonstrate a novel method of methylation detection that utilises immunoaffinity to detect the presence of methylated DNA hybridised to a cDNA microarray. We use a monoclonal antibody specific to 5 methylcytosine to detect the presence of 5 methylcytosine in genomic DNA from human fibroblasts bearing the karyotype 45 XO. We report that over 2900 genes show the presence of methylation in this condition. We also report that 165 genes are consistently methylated in all replicates of these experiments. The methylated genes show a uniform distribution over all the chromosomes. The gene ontology of these also indicates no functional correlation between the genes that are methylated. We detect the presence of methylation in IGF2, an imprinted gene and thus known to harbour DNA methylation. The method is extremely specific and offers a quick and efficient way to analyse the methylation landscape on a high throughput scale. This method uses existing technology to assess methylation and thus can integrate very efficiently into any platform used. A method that detects DNA methylation that is not restricted to specific sequences would provide a useful platform to analyse methylation distribution among the genes in any given phenotypic condition.Availability of additional approaches to examine DNA methylation would lead to increase in our understanding of the methylome and would help define the intrinsic and extrinsic factors which govern it. Microarray based high throughput methods have been extensively used for gene expression analysis. The method described uses a microarray to analyse DNA methylation levels in a gene/cDNA/oligo specific manner. Here, genomic DNA is fragmented and used for hybridization to microarray slides. The presence of DNA cytosine methylation in the hybridized DNA is detected by employing Cy3 labelled anti 5mC( 5-methyl cytidine) antibody (monoclonal). The resolution provided by this method is dependent upon the microarray platform used. This method can be adapted to any platform thus enabling seamless integration with existing technology of gene expression analysis

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Proof of principle for epitope-focused vaccine design.

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Proof of principle for epitope-focused vaccine design.

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