IN SILICO VACCINE DESIGN AGAINST THE TARGET L1 BINDING PROTEIN OF HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS, AN ETIOLOGICAL AGENT OF CERVICAL CANCER, USING BIOINFORMATICS TOOLS

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the smallest virus in the world. HPV is a non-enveloped double-stranded circular DNA virus, which can widely infect human skin and reproductive tract and respiratory epithelium. HPV also has a close relationship with benign and malignant tumors. There is no universal HPV treatment. Although there is a vaccine called Gardasil that can prevent some diseases caused by HPV, it is not recommended for everyone and does not eliminate the chance of getting other types of HPV. Thus, the aim of the present study is to design a subunit vaccine against HPV using bioinformatics approaches. In order to achieve our objective, we have used B-cell and T-cell epitope prediction methods. The possible vaccine target was proposed by using the conserved sequence among the chosen L1 binding protein from twenty different sequences. Structure prediction of this sequence by PSIPRED revealed that one helix is present in the sequence. The use of immune-informatics has greatly revolutionized the field of vaccine research, discovery and development. It demands the proper computational investigations of every possible antigenic candidate. The present study finds that L141 protein of HPV can be also an effective candidate for the development of preventive measures against the drastic diseases caused by the virus by blocking its resistance efficiency. In fact in silico approach for vaccine target prediction are definitely reducing manpower, time and cost in relation to searching a lead antigenic molecule against the L1 protein.