UNLABELLED We present a suite of on-line tools to design candidate vaccine proteins, and to assess antigen potential, using coverage of k-mers (as proxies for potential T-cell epitopes) as a metric. The vaccine design tool uses the recently published 'mosaic' method to generate protein sequences optimized for coverage of high-frequency k-mers; the coverage-assessment tools facilitate coverage c...

The reliance of the immune system on constitutive microbial stimulation support the idea that both responsiveness to vaccines and vaccine design need to be considered in the context of host-microbiota interactions. Manipulation of microbe function or composition via diet alteration or microbiota engraftment may soon become a viable approach to control immunity and, as such, vaccine responses. L...

BACKGROUND We evaluated the herd protection conferred by an oral cholera vaccine using 2 approaches: cluster design and geographic information system (GIS) design. METHODS Residents living in 3933 dwellings (clusters) in Kolkata, India, were cluster-randomized to receive either cholera vaccine or oral placebo. Nonpregnant residents aged≥1 year were invited to participate in the trial. Only th...

PURPOSE Dengue virus infection is now a global problem. Currently, there is no licensed vaccine or proven antiviral treatment against this virus. All four serotypes (1-4) of dengue virus can infect human. An effective dengue vaccine should be tetravalent to induce protective immune responses against all four serotypes. Most of dengue vaccine candidates are monovalent, or in the form of physical...

We introduce a new measure of antigenic distance between influenza A vaccine and circulating strains. The measure correlates well with efficacies of the H3N2 influenza A component of the annual vaccine between 1971 and 2004, as do results of a theory of the immune response to influenza following vaccination. This new measure of antigenic distance is correlated with vaccine efficacy to a greater...

Dengue virus infection is now a global problem affecting tens of millions of people. The spread of the four dengue virus serotypes had led to increased incidence of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) reported and with 2.5 billion people at risk, efforts towards the development of safe and effective vaccines against dengue must be accelerated. This chapter reviews some of the important lessons of p...

The epithelial type 1 transmembrane mucin MUC1 is long-established as a marker for monitoring recurrence of breast cancer, and beyond its diagnostic marker qualities, it is a promising target for immunotherapeutic strategies to treat cancer by active specific immunization. The mucin is able to break tolerance and to induce humoral immune responses in healthy subjects and in cancer patients, but...

Commensal organisms with the potential to cause disease pose a challenge in developing treatment options. Using the example featured in this study, pneumococcal disease begins with Streptococcus pneumoniae colonization, followed by triggering events that prompt the release of a virulent subpopulation of bacteria. Current vaccines focus on colonization prevention, which poses unintended conseque...

Background: Development of an effective vaccine is highly needed in order to restrict the AIDS pandemic. DNA vaccines initiate both arms of immunity without the potential of causing disease. HIV-1 p24 and gp41 (gag and env) proteins play important roles in viral pathogenesis and are effective candidates for immune induction and vaccine design. Objective: In this study, new DNA vaccine candidate...

background hypervariability of hcv proteins is an important obstacle to design an efficient vaccine for hcv infection. multi-epitope vaccines containing conserved epitopes of the virus could be a promising approach for protection against hcv. objectives cellular and humoral immune responses against multi-epitope dna and peptide vaccines were evaluated in balb/c mice. materials and methods in th...