tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
EpiCombFlu: Exploring known influenza epitopes and their combination to design universal influenza vaccine
Varun Jaiswal,
Sree K Chanumolu,
Pankaj Sharma,
Rajinder S Chauhan and
Chittaranjan Rout*
+ Author Affiliations
Department of Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan, Himachal Pradesh-173234, INDIA
↵*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Chittaranjan Rout, E-mail: chittaranjan.rout@juit.ac.in
Received February 26, 2013.
Revision received May 21, 2013.
Accepted May 22, 2013.
Abstract
Motivation & Result: Influenza is responsible for half-million deaths annually and vaccination is the best preventive measure against this pervasive health problem. Influenza vaccines developed from surveillance data of each season are strain-specific, therefore, unable to provide protection against pandemic strains arising from antigenic shift and drift. Seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics of influenza have created a need for universal influenza vaccine (UIV). Researchers have shown that combination of conserved epitopes has potential to be used as UIV. In the present work, available data on strains, proteins, epitopes and their associated information were used to develop a web-resource, ?EpiCombFlu? which can explore different influenza epitopes and their combinations for conservation among different strains, population coverage, and immune response for vaccine design. Forward selection algorithm was implemented in EpiCombFlu to select optimum combination of epitopes which may be expressed and evaluated as potential UIV.
The web-resource is freely available at http://117.211.115.67/influenza/home.html.
Varun Jaiswal,
Sree K Chanumolu,
Pankaj Sharma,
Rajinder S Chauhan and
Chittaranjan Rout*
+ Author Affiliations
Department of Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan, Himachal Pradesh-173234, INDIA
↵*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Chittaranjan Rout, E-mail: chittaranjan.rout@juit.ac.in
Received February 26, 2013.
Revision received May 21, 2013.
Accepted May 22, 2013.
Abstract
Motivation & Result: Influenza is responsible for half-million deaths annually and vaccination is the best preventive measure against this pervasive health problem. Influenza vaccines developed from surveillance data of each season are strain-specific, therefore, unable to provide protection against pandemic strains arising from antigenic shift and drift. Seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics of influenza have created a need for universal influenza vaccine (UIV). Researchers have shown that combination of conserved epitopes has potential to be used as UIV. In the present work, available data on strains, proteins, epitopes and their associated information were used to develop a web-resource, ?EpiCombFlu? which can explore different influenza epitopes and their combinations for conservation among different strains, population coverage, and immune response for vaccine design. Forward selection algorithm was implemented in EpiCombFlu to select optimum combination of epitopes which may be expressed and evaluated as potential UIV.
The web-resource is freely available at http://117.211.115.67/influenza/home.html.