Design and development of multivalent peptide vaccine candidate against influenza a virus

Abstract

Influenza virus is a major pathogen with global spread which infects birds and mammals, including humans. The virus is constantly changing, thus influenza stays in the centre of vaccine research. Effective vaccine should have a wide spectrum of protection from the most circulating and dangerous subtypes of the virus. Our goals are identifying the most immunogenic peptide epitopes among three subtypes of Influenza A virus (H1N1, H3N2 и H5N1) according to affinity to MHC class I & II molecules, and finding epitopes localized in conservative regions of the viral proteome. We propose to screen synthetic oligopeptides emulating conservative and immunogenic regions for the strongest humoral and cell mediated responses in mice to select several epitopes/peptides as multivalent peptide vaccine candidate.