Abstract

AMIN, Nevis et al. T and B epitope prediction of protein NS4b of dengue virus type 3 . Vaccimonitor [online]. 2013, vol.22, n.3, pp. 14-21. ISSN 1025-028X.

Dengue is considered an emerging infectious disease and the most important arthropod-borne viral disease in terms of morbidity and mortality. Despite the efforts made by the international scientific community, there is still no licensed vaccine against dengue. NS4b, the smallest hydrophobic proteins of dengue virus, has been reported to elicit antibodies and chemokines and cytokines in dengue-infected patients, but not much is known regarding the antigenic structure of this protein. In the field of vaccine design, the application of in silico techniques is very useful, for both the discovery and development of new and existing vaccines. Many predicted epitopes have been experimentally verified, demonstrating the usefulness of such predictions. In the present work, prediction programs: BcePred, ABCpred, HLApred, ProPred y Proped 1 were used to find novel epitopes from NS4b dengue virus type 3. 27 B-cell epitopes and 126 T-cell epitopes were identified on NS4b protein. The amino acidic sequence (FEKQLGQV) of NS4b protein was predicted by Bcepred server with a high score. Theoretical analysis of the potential of the T epitope -FEKQLGQV- showed a high coverage to be presented so that a sample of the Cuban population was used. Thirteen epitopes T out of those predicted resulted promiscuous, which can be potential vaccinal candidates. The importance of these epitopes is that they are identified main targets for the development of a subunit vaccine for prevention of dengue disease.

Keywords : dengue; NS4b; epitope; reverse vaccinology; HLA.

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