Design of cocktail peptide vaccine against Cytomegalovirus infection

OBJECTIVES Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) remains a major morbidity and mortality cause in immuno suppressed patients. Therefore, significant effort has been made towards the development of a vaccine. In this study, the expression of the pp65 and gB fusion peptides and Fc domain of mouse IgG2a as a novel delivery system for selective uptake of antigens by antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in Pichia pastoris yeast system were studied. MATERIALS AND METHOD In this study, four immune dominant sequences in pp65 protein and 3 immuno dominant sequences in gB protein were selected according to literature review. Peptide linker -GGGGS- was used for construction of fusion peptide. This fusion peptide was cloned in the pPICZαA expression vector and transfected into P. pastoris host cells. RESULTS Dot blot and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) techniques showed that a high level of pp65-gB-Fc fusion peptide was expressed. CONCLUSION This CMV pp65-gB-Fc fusion peptide could be a promising candidate for the development of a novel peptide vaccine.