Title

Authors

Affiliation

¹Unidad de Bioinformatica. Laboratorios de Investigacion y Desarrollo, Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofia, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia; ²Laboratorio de Enfermedades Infecciosas. Laboratorios de Investigacion y Desarrollo, Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofia, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia; ³Department of International Health. Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University; ⁴Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru; ⁵Cysticercosis Unit, Instituto de Ciencias Neurologicas, Peru

Email

mzimic@jhsph.edu; *Corresponding author

Phone

(511) 483-2942

Fax

(511) 483-2942

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received June 02, 2011; Accepted June 03, 2011; Published June 23, 2011

Cysticercosis is a public health problem in several developing countries. The oncosphere protein TSOL18 is the most immunogenic and protective antigen ever reported against porcine cysticercosis, although no specific epitope has been identified to account for these properties. Recent evidence suggests that protection might be associated with conformational epitopes. Linear epitopes from TSOL18 were computationally predicted and evaluated for immunogenicity and protection against porcine cysticercosis. A synthetic peptide was designed based on predicted linear B cell and T cell epitopes that are exposed on the surface of the theoretically modeled structure of TSOL18. Three surface epitopes from TSOL18 were predicted as immunogenic. A peptide comprising a linear arrangement of these epitopes was chemically synthesized. The capacity of the synthetic peptide to protect pigs against an oral challenge with Taenia solium proglottids was tested in a vaccine trial. The synthetic peptide was able to produce IgG antibodies in pigs and was associated to a reduction of the number of cysts, although was not able to provide complete protection, defined as the complete absence of cysts in necropsy. This study demonstrated that B cell and T cell predicted epitopes from TSOL18 were not able to completely protect pigs against an oral challenge with Taenia solium proglottids. Therefore, other linear epitopes or eventually conformational epitopes may be responsible for the protection conferred by TSOL18.

Citation

Zimic et al. Bioinformation 6(7): 271-274 (2011)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.