The European effort towards the development of mucosal vaccines for poverty-related diseases

Predicting interaction sites from the energetics of isolated proteins: a new approach to epitope mapping

An increasing number of functional studies of proteins have shown that sequence and structural similarities alone may not be sufficient for reliable prediction of their interaction properties. This is particularly true for proteins recognizing specific antibodies, where the prediction of antibody-binding sites, called epitopes, has proven challenging. The antibody-binding properties of an antigen depend on its structure and related dynamics. Aiming to predict the antibody-binding regions of a protein, we investigate a new approach based on the integrated analysis of the dynamical and energetic properties of antigens, to identify nonoptimized, low-intensity energetic interaction networks in the protein structure isolated in solution. The method is based on the idea that recognition sites may correspond to localized regions with low-intensity energetic couplings with the rest of the protein, which allows them to undergo conformational changes, to be recognized by a binding partner, and to tolerate mutations with minimal energetic expense. Upon analyzing the results on isolated proteins and benchmarking against antibody complexes, it is found that the method successfully identifies binding sites located on the protein surface that are accessible to putative binding partners. The combination of dynamics and energetics can thus discriminate between epitopes and other substructures based only on physical properties. We discuss implications for vaccine design.

Tuberculosis research in the European union: past achievements and future challenges

The European Commission (EC) supports a large number of research activities in tuberculosis through the EU Framework Programmes for Research and Development (FP). By utilizing a variety of funding instruments, the EC has established a mixed portfolio of research projects, ranging from small discovery projects to large multidisciplinary consortia with sufficient critical mass to undertake translational and clinical research. The European investments in TB research have generated promising results with new vaccine candidates, drug leads, diagnostic markers and basic research results starting to emerge. In the light of a rapidly changing global research environment it has therefore become timely to review and update the priorities for TB research. To facilitate this process, a high-level conference on "Challenges for the future: research on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis" was convened in Brussels on November 2008. This review gives an overview of the present portfolio of EC funded TB research, and summarises the conclusions from the conference on future perspectives for TB research in Europe and beyond.