Designing of CD8(+) and CD8(+)-overlapped CD4(+) epitope vaccine by targeting late and early proteins of human papillomavirus

Kaliamurthi, Satyavani; Selvaraj, Gurudeeban; Kaushik, Aman Chandra; Gu, Ke-Ren; Wei, Dong-Qing

Immunogenic peptides are one of the excellent resources to develop therapeutic vaccines against hrHPV strains. Instant accessibility of open databases and informatic tools suggest efficient methods to develop vaccines with reduced time, labor, and experimental cost. 36, 37 Several studies reported that virtual peptides of HPV16 and 18 oncoproteins (E6 and E7) efficiently induce immune response in cervical cancer patients as revealed by their peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples. [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] However, cross-protection against all the hrHPV strains could not be ignored. 40 The cross-reactivity of CTL peptide is suspected to play an essential role in producing immune response against multiple strains. 43 Selection of immunogenic epitopes from the whole genome of hrHPV strains may enable designing of novel CTL vaccines. Therefore, we identified the potential immunogenic CD8 + , CD8 + -overlapped CD4 + , and B-cell epitopes from the antigenic proteins of HPV45 and anticipated an epitopes pool with the capability to demonstrate immunogenic responses against all 15 hrHPV strains. The workflow of the study is illustrated in Figure 1 .