2020

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Browsing 2020 by Author "Anosha Liaqat"

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    In silico screening of the putative epitopes from the surface proteins of streptococcus pneumoniae against south asians specific human leukocyte antigens
    (UMT Lahore, 2020) Anosha Liaqat
    Streptococcus pneumoniae is a causative agent of sinusitis, bacteremia, pneumococcal pneumonia, and other pneumococcal infections, most commonly in children under five years. Two serotype-based vaccines, polysaccharide vaccines (PPV) and protein conjugated polysaccharide vaccine (PCV), have provided some protection against this organism, but serotype specificity, and low immunogenicity of these conventional vaccines, have driven the research toward the designing of more efficient treatment strategy against this organism. This study attempted to design the population-specific and highly immunogenic vaccine candidates that can evoke both cell-mediated and humoral immune responses against S. pneumoniae. Consequently, both B and T-cell epitopes from the four pathogenic surface proteins of S. pneumoniae, including PspC, PvaA, PhtD, and Pneumolysin, were identified. Following the epitope prediction, the antigenicity and allergenicity assessments of these epitopes were done by using VaxiJen and AllerTOP. Binding restrictions of selected T-cell epitopes with South Asian specific alleles, retrieved through AFND, were determined using IEDB MHC-binding prediction tools, with the selection of best binder epitopes based on IC50 values of less than 50nM. Population coverage analysis revealed that these epitopes were covering 83.75% of the South Asian population. Finally, after the structural modeling and validations through I-TASSER and SAVES v5.0, the identified epitopes were labeled on their respective protein models using PyMOL. The identified epitopes were not only immunogenic and non-allergenic but also show restriction to the majority of the HLA alleles of the South Asian populations, the identified epitopes might therefore be the probable vaccine candidates for these populations.