InSyB2020 Keynote Speaker 2 | Computer-aided immunotherapy to fight against emerging pathogens

Computer-aided immunotherapy to fight against emerging pathogens
By Gajendra P. S. Raghava, Department of Computational Biology, IIIT, Delhi, India

Abstract:
The major focus of this talk is on advances in the field of computer-aided immunotherapy particularly on epitope/peptide-based vaccines. Epitope or subunit vaccine design has become an integral part of vaccine design in the past three decades. Therefore, identification of immunologically active regions/epitopes recognized by T/B cells plays a crucial role in subunit vaccine design. Experimental methods for the identification of such regions are both cost and labor-intensive. In order to overcome some of the problems a project “Computer-aided Subunit Vaccine Design based on Epitope” was initiated to develop better methods for predicting potential vaccine candidates. Some major topics covered in this section are given below. Adaptive Immunity: In 2001 when the computer-aided vaccine design work was initiated, there was only limited number of methods available. The data from literature and other public resources was compiled in I) MHCBN: a comprehensive database of T-cell epitopes, MHC binders, TAP bonders and non-binders and ii) BCIPEP: a database experimentally determined B-cell epitopes of varying immunogenicity. A promiscuous MHC class I/II benders was developed using virtual and quantitative matrices. In addition methods were also developed for predicting B-cell epitopes. Innate Immunity: Recently in a number of studies, it has been demonstrated that the innate immune system doesn’t merely acts as the first line of defence but provides critical signals for the development of specific adaptive immune response. In order to assist scientific community, a database PRRDB has been developed that provides extensive information about patterns recognition receptors and their ligands. In addition a method for predicting antibacterial peptides was also developed. Emerging pathogen strains: Emergence of new strains of disease-causing viruses is one of the major threats to the human population; for example strains of coronavirus (like SARS, MERS, and COVID19). The coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines under trial was reviewed and number of limitations of these traditional vaccines was observed. These vaccines may induce undesired side effects due to induction cytokine storms. Thus, there is a need to develop computer aided vaccines which are mainly based on peptides. As per recent survey, peptide drugs are estimated around 10% of the entire pharmaceutical market and will make up an even larger proportion of the market in the future. In this talk, peptide-based therapeutics will be discussed that will include; peptide-based subunit vaccines, drug delivery along with some challenges associated with this therapy.