Identification of relevant regions on structural and nonstructural proteins of Zika virus for vaccine and diagnostic test development: an in silico approach

摘要

Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arbovirus belonging to the Flaviviridae family and the genus Flavivirus. Infection with ZIKV causes a mild, self-limiting febrile illness called Zika fever. However, ZIKV infection has been recently associated with microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Vaccines for the disease are a high priority of World Health Organization. Several studies are currently being conducted to develop a vaccine against ZIKV, but until now there is no licensed ZIKV vaccine. This study used a novel immunoinformatics approach to identify potential T-cell immunogenic epitopes present in the structural and nonstructural proteins of ZIKV. Fourteen T-cell candidate epitopes were identified on ZIKV structural and nonstructural proteins: pr³⁶⁻⁵⁰; C⁶¹⁻⁷⁵; C^103−117; E^374−382; E^477−491; NS2a⁹⁰⁻¹⁰⁴; NS2a^174−188; NS2a^179−193; NS2a^190−204; NS2a^195−209; NS2a^200−214; NS3^175−189; and NS4a⁸²⁻⁹⁶; NS4a⁹⁹⁻¹¹³. Among these epitopes, only E^374−382 is a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) type I restricted epitope. All identified epitopes showed a low similarity with other important flaviviruses but had a high conservation rate among the ZIKV strains and a high population coverage rate. Therefore, these predicted T-cell epitopes are potential candidates targets for development of vaccines to prevent ZIKV infection.