Ramanathan B, Poh CL, Kirk K, McBride WJH, Aaskov J, Grollo L. Synthetic B-Cell Epitopes Eliciting Cross-Neutralizing Antibodies: Strategies for Future Dengue Vaccine.
PLoS One 2016;
11:e0155900. [PMID:
27223692 PMCID:
PMC4880327 DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0155900]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2016] [Accepted: 05/05/2016] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Dengue virus (DENV) is a major public health threat worldwide. A key element in protection from dengue fever is the neutralising antibody response. Anti-dengue IgG purified from DENV-2 infected human sera showed reactivity against several peptides when evaluated by ELISA and epitope extraction techniques. A multi-step computational approach predicted six antigenic regions within the E protein of DENV-2 that concur with the 6 epitopes identified by the combined ELISA and epitope extraction approach. The selected peptides representing B-cell epitopes were attached to a known dengue T-helper epitope and evaluated for their vaccine potency. Immunization of mice revealed two novel synthetic vaccine constructs that elicited good humoral immune responses and produced cross-reactive neutralising antibodies against DENV-1, 2 and 3. The findings indicate new directions for epitope mapping and contribute towards the future development of multi-epitope based synthetic peptide vaccine.
Collapse