Professor
Le Thi Ly
School of Biotechnology, International University – Vietnam National University
Title of the talk: Computational approach for selection of epitope-based dengue vaccine targets
Abstract
High antigenic variability in the envelope protein (E) of different virus strains has been a major obstacle in designing effective vaccines for Dengue virus (DENV). One way to solve this problem is to recognize specific regions within different protein sequences of E that have the tendency to stay constant through evolution. These regions may possess some special attributes to become a vaccine candidate against dengue virus. In this study, a computational approach was utilized to identify and analyze highly conserved amino acid sequences of the DENV E protein. Sequences of 9 amino acids or more were specifically focused due to their immune-relevant as T-cell determinants. Different bioinformatics tools were responsible for revealing conserved regions in the DENV E protein and constructing the phylogenetic tree from the sequence database. The tools also predicted immunogenicity of the identified vaccine targets. Ultimately, two peptide regions of at least 9 amino acids were chosen due to their high conserved attribute in more than 95% of all collected DENV sequences. Moreover, both of them was found to be immune-relevant by their correspondence to known or putative HLA-restricted T cell determinants. The conserved attribute of these sequences through the entire analysis of this study supports their potential as candidates for further wet laboratory experiments.
Biography
- 2010: Doctor of Philosophy degree in Chemistry, University of Utah.
- 2004: Master degree in Physical Chemistry, Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences.
- 2000: Bachelor degree in Chemistry, Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy.
Publications: Researchgate.