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A novel approach to Peptide Vaccine Design for Ebola virus
1 , 2 , 3 , 4, 5 , * 6 , 5, 7 , 8 , 9
1  Electrical Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
2  Microbiology Department, St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata
3  Computer Science Department, Government College of Engineering and Textile Technology, Serampore
4  Jagadis Bose National Science Talent Search, Kolkata
5  Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Education, Kolkata
6  Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Education, 404B Jodhpur Park, Kolkata 700068, INDIA
7  Physics Department, Jadavpur University, Jadavpur, Kolkata
8  Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Education
9  Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN, USA

Abstract:

The Ebola viral disease with high fatality ratio is making a comeback in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after its rampage in West Africa in2014-16, that has spawned fears of leading to a pandemic. Vaccines such as the experimental rVSV-ZEBOV has provided protection in 70-80% of the cases, but such vaccines are in short supply and doubts exist of its availability and sustainability in pandemic cases.

Peptide vaccines promise to amend this lacunae as a chemical construct that can be scaled up to requirement in manufacturing set-up, are easy to produce in pure form and store as well as transport much more easily and economically than traditional vaccines. Although no peptide vaccines have been licensed yet for human use, the rapid growth of applications of in silica approaches to peptide vaccine design and application to a myriad of virus infections, and subsequent follow-up experimental work, have led to expectations to licensures in the near future. We have proposed a protocol to automate the search procedure for suitable vaccines using mathematical and computational modelling approaches that ensure long life of such vaccines even in the face of rapid mutational changes in viral sequences. In this paper we outline the mathematical model we have used and the recent improvements in the techniques to ensure the best recommendations for peptide vaccine libraries, especially against the Ebola virus that threatens to spill over the Congo border and cause epidemic and pandemics in a globalized world.

Keywords: peptide vaccines; ebola virus; protein sequences; coserved segments in pathogens; epitopes discovery
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