Dr. Tran Thi Hong Kim
Pasteur Institute, Hochiminh City, Vietnam.
Title of the talk: Study on the immunogenicity of in silico-predicted epitopes on HA antigen from influenza H5N1 virus
To develop vaccine with stable efficiency against easily transforming virus such as influenza H5N1 virus, bioinformatic tools have been used to predict conserved epitopes from viral antigens to be used as materials for development of polyvalent vaccine against this virus. Using this approach, we have successfully predicted B-cell and T-cell epitopes from HA and NA antigens of H5N1 virus. The aims of the study are to genetically synthetize and evaluate the immunogenicity of several H5N1 viral epitopes predicted from HA antigen which plays crucial role in viral virulence. We have successful synthesis B-cell and T-cell epitopes in form of recombinant epitopes, fusing with flagellin H:1,2 from Salmonella Typhimurium. The synthetized epitopes have been evaluated the immunogenicity by ELISA and ELISPOT method, respectively. The results of testing the ability of mice antisera to neutralize HA antigen and viral toxigenicity show that HI titers of anti-H:1,2-(HaBc)3 and anti-H:1,2-(HaBdc)3 antisera was higher than those of anti-HaBc and anti-HaBdc antisera 2 to 2,3 times; the HI and microneutralization titers of anti-recombinant epitopes antisera on A/Vietnam/CL26/2004(H5N1) and A/H5N1/Chicken13/Vietnam/LA/2006 virus have shown that H:1,2-(HaBdc)3, GST-H:1,2-(HaT1)3 and H:1,2-(HaBc)3 recombinant antigens could induce strong immune response.
Biography
Tran Thi Hong Kim has completed her PhD at the age of 34 years from VNUHCM-University of Science, Vietnam. She has been a lecturer for 9 years at VNUHCM-University of Science. She is now a researcher at Respiratory Viruses Laboratory/National Influenza Centre, Microbiology and Immunology Department in Pasteur Institute Ho Chi Minh City.
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