Immunoinformatics: In Silico Approaches and Computational Design of a Multi-epitope, Immunogenic Protein

Abstract

Immunoinformatics is a new critical field with several tools and databases that conduct the eyesight of experimental selection and facilitate analysis of the great amount of immunologic data obtained from experimental researches and helps to design and introducing new hypothesis. Given these visages, immunoinformatics seems to be the way that develop and progress the immunological research. Bioinformatics methods and applications are successfully employed in vaccine informatics to assist different sites of the preclinical, clinical, and post-licensure vaccine enterprises. On the other hand, the progression of molecular biology and immunology caused epitope vaccines have become the focus of research on molecular vaccines. Moreover, reverse vaccinology could improve vaccine production and vaccination protocols by in silico prediction of protein-vaccine candidates from genome sequences. B- and T-cell immune epitopes could be predicted by immunoinformatics algorithms and computational methods to improve the vaccine design, protective immunity analysis, assessment of vaccine safety and efficacy, and immunization modeling. This review aims to discuss the power of computational approaches in vaccine design and their relevance to the development of effective vaccines. Furthermore, the various divisions of this field and available tools in each item are introduced and reviewed.

Keywords:

• Computational immunology
• epitope prediction
• immunoinformatics
• vaccine design

Declaration of Interest

The authors of this article declare that there is no conflict of interests.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully thank Cellular and Molecular Biology Research Center and Department of Biotechnology, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.