Title
In vivo validation of predicted and conserved T cell epitopes in a swine influenza model
Date Issued
01 July 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Loving C.
Moise L.
Terry F.
Brockmeier S.
Hughes H.
Martin W.
De Groot A.
University of Rhode Island
Publisher(s)
Public Library of Science
Abstract
Swine influenza is a highly contagious respiratory viral infection in pigs that is responsible for significant financial losses to pig farmers annually. Current measures to protect herds from infection include: inactivated whole-virus vaccines, subunit vaccines, and alpha replicon-based vaccines. As is true for influenza vaccines for humans, these strategies do not provide broad protection against the diverse strains of influenza A virus (IAV) currently circulating in U.S. swine. Improved approaches to developing swine influenza vaccines are needed. Here, we used immunoinformatics tools to identify class I and II T cell epitopes highly conserved in seven representative strains of IAV in U.S. swine and predicted to bind to Swine Leukocyte Antigen (SLA) alleles prevalent in commercial swine. Epitope-specific interferon-gamma (IFNα) recall responses to pooled peptides and whole virus were detected in pigs immunized with multi-epitope plasmid DNA vaccines encoding strings of class I and II putative epitopes. In a retrospective analysis of the IFNα responses to individual peptides compared to predictions specific to the SLA alleles of cohort pigs, we evaluated the predictive performance of PigMatrix and demonstrated its ability to distinguish non-immunogenic from immunogenic peptides and to identify promiscuous class II epitopes. Overall, this study confirms the capacity of PigMatrix to predict immunogenic T cell epitopes and demonstrate its potential for use in the design of epitope-driven vaccines for swine. Additional studies that match the SLA haplotype of animals with the study epitopes will be required to evaluate the degree of immune protection conferred by epitope-driven DNA vaccines in pigs.
Volume
11
Issue
7
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Biología celular, Microbiología Zoología, Ornitología, Entomología, ciencias biológicas del comportamiento
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84978841946
PubMed ID
Source
PLoS ONE
ISSN of the container
19326203
Sponsor(s)
ADG and WDM are senior officers and majority shareholders at EpiVax, Inc., a privately-owned immunoinformatics and vaccine design company located in Providence, RI, USA. LM and FET are employees at EpiVax, in which LM holds stock options. ADG, WDM, LM and FET acknowledge that there is a potential conflict of interest related to their relationship with EpiVax and attest that the work contained in this research report is free of any bias that might be associated with the commercial goals of the company. This study was conducted in part with funding from National Pork Board. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus