Identification of relevant regions on structural and nonstructural proteins of Zika virus for vaccine and diagnostic test development: an in silico approach

E A Salvador; G A Pires de Souza; L C Cotta Malaquias; T Wang; L F Leomil Coelho

doi:10.1016/j.nmni.2019.01.002

Identification of relevant regions on structural and nonstructural proteins of Zika virus for vaccine and diagnostic test development: an in silico approach

New Microbes New Infect. 2019 Jan 31:29:100506. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2019.01.002. eCollection 2019 May.

Authors

E A Salvador¹, G A Pires de Souza¹, L C Cotta Malaquias¹, T Wang², L F Leomil Coelho¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Federal University of Alfenas, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
² Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Department of Pathology, Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.

Abstract

Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arbovirus belonging to the Flaviviridae family and the genus Flavivirus. Infection with ZIKV causes a mild, self-limiting febrile illness called Zika fever. However, ZIKV infection has been recently associated with microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Vaccines for the disease are a high priority of World Health Organization. Several studies are currently being conducted to develop a vaccine against ZIKV, but until now there is no licensed ZIKV vaccine. This study used a novel immunoinformatics approach to identify potential T-cell immunogenic epitopes present in the structural and nonstructural proteins of ZIKV. Fourteen T-cell candidate epitopes were identified on ZIKV structural and nonstructural proteins: pr^36-50; C^61-75; C^103-117; E^374-382; E^477-491; NS2a^90-104; NS2a^174-188; NS2a^179-193; NS2a^190-204; NS2a^195-209; NS2a^200-214; NS3^175-189; and NS4a^82-96; NS4a^99-113. Among these epitopes, only E^374-382 is a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) type I restricted epitope. All identified epitopes showed a low similarity with other important flaviviruses but had a high conservation rate among the ZIKV strains and a high population coverage rate. Therefore, these predicted T-cell epitopes are potential candidates targets for development of vaccines to prevent ZIKV infection.

Keywords: Diagnostic test; Immunoinformatic; T-cell epitope; Zika virus; vaccine.