Broad Spectrum Peptide Vaccine Design against Hepatitis C Virus.

Hepatitis C virus infection is a global burden. Vaccination is the main proposed modality to control this disease. No peptide vaccine has been released to market due to weak cellular immune responses and the limitation of vaccine ability to induce humoral immune responses. Five predominated HCV subtypes in Indonesia (1a, 1b, 1c, 3a, and 3k) were aligned and the conserved regions were selected. All conserved regions were undergone epitopes prediction for class I HLA, class II HLA, and B cells. Twenty class I HLA ranging from HLA-A, HLA-B, to HLA-C were used to predict the potential epitopes by using NetMHCPan and IEDB. Eight HLA-DRB1 and combination of 3 HLA-DQA1 and 5 HLA-DQB1 were utilized for Class II epitopes prediction by using NetMHCIIPan and IEDB. LBtope and IgPred were used to predict B cells epitopes. For Class I HLA, proteasome analysis was performed by NetCTL and stability of the epitopes to HLA binding was calculated by using NetMHCStabPan. All predicted epitopes were analyzed for antigenicity, toxicity, and stability. Population coverage was calculated for several best epitopes. Two best epitopes from E2 (Envelope 2) protein, GHRMAWDMMMNWSP and PALSTGLIHLHQN were selected as B cells and CD8+ T cell inducer. Other two peptides, LGIGTVLDQAETAG and VLVLNPSVAATLGF, taken from NS3 protein were selected as CD4+ T Cell inducer. This study suggested the utilization of all four peptides above to make a combinational peptide vaccine for in vivo study to prove its ability to induce secondary response to prevent HCV infection.