Increased B Cell Understanding Puts Improved Vaccine Platforms Just Over the Horizon.

In the face of an endlessly expanding repertoire of Ags, vaccines are constantly being tested, each more effective than the last. As viruses and other pathogens evolve to become more infectious, the need for efficient and effective vaccines grows daily, which is especially obvious in an era that is still attempting to remove itself from the clutches of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the cause of coronavirus pandemic. To continue evolving alongside these pathogens, it is proving increasingly essential to consider one of the main effector cells of the immune system. As one of the chief orchestrators of the humoral immune response, the B cell and other lymphocytes are essential to not only achieving immunity, but also maintaining it, which is the vital objective of every vaccine.

A Domain Model for SARS-Co V-2 Rational Vaccine Design to Engineer a Prediction Tool for Binding Affinity and Antigenicity

One of our greatest present challenges are designing vaccines against SARS COV2 and its variants. Rational vaccine design uses computational methods prior to development of a vaccine for testing in animals and humans the latest methods in rational vaccine design use machine learning techniques to predict binding affinity and antigenicity but offer the researchers only isolated stand-Alone tools. A difficulty that software engineers and data scientist face in development of tools for doctors and researchers is their lack of knowledge of the medical domain. This paper presents a set of domain model developed in collaboration between software engineers and a medical researcher in the process of building a tool scientists could use to predict binding affinity and antigenicity of potential designs of SARS COV2 vaccines. A domain model visualizes the real-world entities and their interrelationships, that together define the domain space. This domain model will be useful to other software engineers trying to predict other characteristics of vaccines, such as potential autoimmunity response. © 2021 IEEE.

Combinatorial F-G Immunogens as Nipah and Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccine Candidates.

Nipah virus (NiV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) possess two surface glycoproteins involved in cellular attachment and membrane fusion, both of which are potential targets for vaccines. The majority of vaccine development is focused on the attachment (G) protein of NiV, which is the immunodominant target. In contrast, the fusion (F) protein of RSV is the main target in vaccine development. Despite this, neutralising epitopes have been described in NiV F and RSV G, making them alternate targets for vaccine design. Through rational design, we have developed a vaccine strategy applicable to phylogenetically divergent NiV and RSV that comprises both the F and G proteins (FxG). In a mouse immunization model, we found that NiV FxG elicited an improved immune response capable of neutralising pseudotyped NiV and a NiV mutant that is able to escape neutralisation by two known F-specific antibodies. RSV FxG elicited an immune response against both F and G and was able to neutralise RSV; however, this was inferior to the immune response of F alone. Despite this, RSV FxG elicited a response against a known protective epitope within G that is conserved across RSV A and B subgroups, which may provide additional protection in vivo. We conclude that inclusion of F and G antigens within a single design provides a streamlined subunit vaccine strategy against both emerging and established pathogens, with the potential for broader protection against NiV.