Study of the Binding Pattern of HLA Class I Alleles of Indian Frequency and cTAP Binding Peptide for Chikungunya Vaccine Development.

Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne disease, caused by the member of the family belongs to the genus , making it a major threat in all developing countries as well as some developed countries. The mosquito acts as a vector for the disease and carries the CHIK-Virus. To date there is no direct treatment available and that demands the development of more effective vaccines. In this study author employed Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource, a machine learning-based algorithm principally working on the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithm, also known as (IEDB-ANN) for the prediction and analysis of Epitopes. A total of 173 epitopes were identified on the basis of IC50 values, among them 40 epitopes were found, sharing part with the linear B-cell epitopes and exposed to the cTAP1protein, and out of 40, 6 epitopes were noticed to show interactions with the cTAP with their binding energy ranging from - 3.61 to - 1.22 kcal/mol. The six epitopes identified were exposed to the HLA class I alleles and from this all revealed interaction with the HLA alleles and minimum binding energy that ranges from - 4.12 to - 5.88 kcal/mol. Besides, two T cell epitopes i.e. KVFTGVYPE and STVPVAPPR were found most promiscuous candidates. These promiscuous epitopes-HLA complexes were further analyzed by the molecular dynamics simulation to check the stability of the complex. Results obtained from this study suggest that the identified epitopes i.e. and , are likely to be capable of passing through the lumen of ER to bind withthe HLA class I allele and provide new insights and potential application in the designing and development of peptide-based vaccine candidate for the treatment of chikungunya.