| Autor: |
Lim CP; School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia.; Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia., Kok BH; Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia., Lim HT; Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia., Chuah C; Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Penang, Malaysia., Abdul Rahman B; Pharmaniaga Berhad, Kawasan Perindustrian Bukit Raja Selatan, Shah Alam, Malaysia., Abdul Majeed AB; Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Bandar Puncak Alam, Malaysia., Wykes M; Molecular Immunology Group, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia., Leow CH; Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia., Leow CY; School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia. |
| Abstrakt: |
The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has globally devastated public health, the economies of many countries and quality of life universally. The recent emergence of immune-escaped variants and scenario of vaccinated individuals being infected has raised the global concerns about the effectiveness of the current available vaccines in transmission control and disease prevention. Given the high rate mutation of SARS-CoV-2, an efficacious vaccine targeting against multiple variants that contains virus-specific epitopes is desperately needed. An immunoinformatics approach is gaining traction in vaccine design and development due to the significant reduction in time and cost of immunogenicity studies and increasing reliability of the generated results. It can underpin the development of novel therapeutic methods and accelerate the design and production of peptide vaccines for infectious diseases. Structural proteins, particularly spike protein (S), along with other proteins have been studied intensively as promising coronavirus vaccine targets. Numbers of promising online immunological databases, tools and web servers have widely been employed for the design and development of next generation COVID-19 vaccines. This review highlights the role of immunoinformatics in identifying immunogenic peptides as potential vaccine targets, involving databases, and prediction and characterization of epitopes which can be harnessed for designing future coronavirus vaccines. |
