Designing a Novel Multi-Epitope Vaccine Against Htlv-1 Related Adult T-cell Leukemia/Lymphoma: An In Silico Approach

Title:Designing a Novel Multi-Epitope Vaccine Against Htlv-1 Related Adult T-cell Leukemia/Lymphoma: An In Silico Approach

Volume: 18 Issue: 3

Author(s): Elnaz Farahi, Mohammad Javad Mokhtari, Younes Ghasemi and Navid Nezafat*

Affiliation:

• Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz,Iran

Keywords: ATLL, cancer, epitope, HTLV-1, RS09, vaccine.

Abstract:

Background: Cancer is a genetic disorder in which several factors like oncoviruses are involved. Among viruses, Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) is a human oncovirus whose long-term infection leads to Adult T-Cell Leukemia/Lymphoma (ATLL).

The lack of a vaccine against HTLV-1 and limited efficacy of available treatments for ATLL due to the weakness of the immune system led us to develop novel therapeutic\prophylactic epitope vaccine, which is able to potentiate the immune system against HTLV-1.

Methods: In this research, the amino acid sequences of TAX, HBZ, gp62 and NY-ESO-1 were retrieved from the UniProt database. Afterwards, the bioinformatics analyses were performed to select the Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes (CTL) and Helper T Lymphocyte (HTL) epitopes using IEDB, RANKPEP, CTLpred and PA Complex servers. The selected epitopes, along with RS09 protein adjuvant, were connected to each other via proper amino acid linkers.

RS09 adjuvant was used as a TLR4 agonist to assure the induction of immune response. Then, the three-dimensional model of the protein vaccine was generated via Phyer2 software. In the next step, the optimization of the final structure of the protein vaccine was performed using GalaxyRefine, Galaxyloop and KOBAMIN servers.

Results: Evaluation of 3D protein vaccine with ERRAT, PROSA-web and Ramachandran plots servers showed that the vaccine possesses a high-quality structure; moreover, the vaccine was antigen and non-allergen.

Conclusion: We believe that the designed vaccine candidate can stimulate cellular and humoral immunity effectively; however, the potency of the vaccine should confirm via in vitro and in vivo immunological assays.

Cite this article as:

Farahi Elnaz , Mokhtari Javad Mohammad , Ghasemi Younes and Nezafat Navid *, Designing a Novel Multi-Epitope Vaccine Against Htlv-1 Related Adult T-cell Leukemia/Lymphoma: An In Silico Approach, Current Proteomics 2021; 18 (3) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1570164617999200717232832