Статья

In silico design of influenza a virus artificial epitope-based T-cell antigens and the evaluation of their immunogenicity in mice

S. Bazhan, D. Antonets, E. Starostina, T. Ilyicheva, O. Kaplina, V. Marchenko, O. Volkova, A. Bakulina, L. Karpenko,
2020

The polyepitope strategy is promising approach for successfully creating a broadly protective flu vaccine, which targets T-lymphocytes (both CD4+ and CD8+) to recognise the most conserved epitopes of viral proteins. In this study, we employed a computer-aided approach to develop several artificial antigens potentially capable of evoking immune responses to different virus subtypes. These antigens included conservative T-cell epitopes of different influenza A virus proteins. To design epitope-based antigens we used experimentally verified information regarding influenza virus T-cell epitopes from the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) (http://www.iedb.org). We constructed two “human” and two “murine” variants of polyepitope antigens. Amino acid sequences of target polyepitope antigens were designed using our original TEpredict/PolyCTLDesigner software. Immunogenic and protective features of DNA constructs encoding “murine” target T-cell immunogens were studied in BALB/c mice. We showed that mice groups immunised with a combination of computer-generated “murine” DNA immunogens had a 37.5% survival rate after receiving a lethal dose of either A/California/4/2009 (H1N1) virus or A/Aichi/2/68 (H3N2) virus, while immunisation with live flu H1N1 and H3N2 vaccine strains provided protection against homologous viruses and failed to protect against heterologous viruses. These results demonstrate that mechanisms of cross-protective immunity may be associated with the stimulation of specific T-cell responses. This study demonstrates that our computer-aided approach may be successfully used for rational designing artificial polyepitope antigens capable of inducing virus-specific T-lymphocyte responses and providing partial protection against two different influenza virus subtypes. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Цитирование

Похожие публикации

Источник

Версии

  • 1. Version of Record от 2020-01-01

Метаданные

Об авторах
  • S. Bazhan
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • D. Antonets
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • E. Starostina
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • T. Ilyicheva
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • O. Kaplina
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • V. Marchenko
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
  • O. Volkova
    Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Siberian Branch of the RAS
  • A. Bakulina
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, Novosibirsk State University
  • L. Karpenko
    State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR
Название журнала
  • Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics
Номер гранта
  • undefined
Тип документа
  • journal article
Тип лицензии Creative Commons
  • CC BY
Правовой статус документа
  • Свободная лицензия
Источник
  • scopus