<i>In silico</i> prediction of T‐cell and B‐cell epitopes of human papillomavirus type 16 L1 protein
Shahab Mahmoudvand, Somayeh Shokri, Manoochehr Makvandi, Reza Taherkhani, Mohammad Rashno, Farid Azizi Jalilian, Kambiz Ahmadi Angali
Abstract
Abstract Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV‐16) is one of the most important cause of developing cervical cancer. Therefore, effective epitope‐based vaccine design for HPV‐16 would be of major medical benefit. The aim of our study was to identify B‐ and T‐cell epitopes of HPV‐16 L1 protein. In this study, the HPV‐16 L1 gene was isolated from HPV recovered from five vaginal swab samples using specific primers and finally sequenced. The ExPASy translate tool ( http://web.expasy.org/translate/ ) was used to convert nucleotide sequence into amino acid sequence. Bioinformatic analysis was employed to predict suitable B‐ and T‐cell epitopes and immunogenicity, allergenicity, and toxicity of predicted epitopes were then evaluated. Afterward, the selected T‐cell epitopes were docked using Molegro Virtual Docker software. The two epitopes 207 AMDFTTLQA 215 and 200 MVDTGFGAM 208 have showed a very strong binding affinity to HLA‐A0201 and HLA‐B3501 molecules, respectively. Outcome of B‐cell epitope prediction showed that epitope 475 KAKPKFTLGKRK ATPTTSSTSTTAKRKK 502 contained overlapped epitope, which might be the epitope associated with the production of neutralizing antibody response. Based on this finding, the predicted B‐ and T‐cell epitopes are promising targets for epitope‐based vaccine development against HPV‐16. Further in vivo and in vitro experiments are needed to confirm our findings.