Identification of cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes on swine viruses: multi-epitope design for universal T cell vaccine

PLoS One. 2013 Dec 17;8(12):e84443. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084443. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Classical swine fever (CSF), foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) are the primary diseases affecting the pig industry globally. Vaccine induced CD8(+) T cell-mediated immune response might be long-lived and cross-serotype and thus deserve further attention. Although large panels of synthetic overlapping peptides spanning the entire length of the polyproteins of a virus facilitate the detection of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes, it is an exceedingly costly and cumbersome approach. Alternatively, computational predictions have been proven to be of satisfactory accuracy and are easily performed. Such a method enables the systematic identification of genome-wide CTL epitopes by incorporating epitope prediction tools in analyzing large numbers of viral sequences. In this study, we have implemented an integrated bioinformatics pipeline for the identification of CTL epitopes of swine viruses including the CSF virus (CSFV), FMD virus (FMDV) and PRRS virus (PRRSV) and assembled these epitopes on a web resource to facilitate vaccine design. Identification of epitopes for cross protections to different subtypes of virus are also reported in this study and may be useful for the development of a universal vaccine against such viral infections among the swine population. The CTL epitopes identified in this study have been evaluated in silico and possibly provide more and wider protection in compared to traditional single-reference vaccine design. The web resource is free and open to all users through http://sb.nhri.org.tw/ICES.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Antigens, Viral / chemistry
  • Antigens, Viral / genetics
  • Antigens, Viral / immunology*
  • Classical Swine Fever / prevention & control
  • Classical Swine Fever Virus / genetics
  • Classical Swine Fever Virus / immunology*
  • Epitope Mapping
  • Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte / chemistry
  • Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte / genetics
  • Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte / immunology*
  • Genome, Viral
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Swine
  • T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / immunology*
  • Viral Vaccines / immunology

Substances

  • Antigens, Viral
  • Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte
  • Viral Vaccines

Grants and funding

This work was supported by intramural funding from the National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan (PH-101-PP-45 to YCLiao). The computational facilities for this work were partly supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan (NSC101-2319-B-400-001 to YC Liao and NSC101-2313-B-020-017-MY3 to WB Chung). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.