CAM-HERO ABSTRACTS 2024

Despite several control efforts since the emergence of the first case in the 1980s, the world has still not been able to vanquish the global AIDS epidemic. With an estimated over 39 million persons, currently living with HIV, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) have been the sole approach to control. Since ARVs are often associated with several side effects, an HIV vaccine may need to prompt strong responses from immune cells to prevent infection with HIV. Unfortunately, vaccine trials so far have returned unfruitful results, possibly due to their inability to induce effective cellular, humoral, and innate immune responses. A multi-epitope vaccine against HIV would be an invaluable addition to current control efforts. In this study, several B-cell and T-cell epitopes key viral proteins from different strains were combined with built-in TLR4 agonist adjuvant together as well as PADRE and TAT peptides to create a multi-epitope vaccine candidate which was predicted to have high antigenicity and immunogenicity.  Immune simulation analyses showed that the vaccine candidate can elicit both humoral and cellular immune responses against HIV. Conservation of the selected proteins and predicted epitopes suggests that the generated chimera could be helpful for cross-protection across different virus strains. The 3D structure was predicted, refined, and validated using bioinformatics tools. Protein-protein docking of the chimeric vaccine candidate with the TLR4 predicted efficient binding. Further experimental validation of the vaccine construct is needed to confirm its efficacy and safety in vivo. This study provides a promising approach for the design of multi-epitope vaccines against HIV and other infectious diseases. Overall, the constructed multi-epitope vaccine candidate demonstrated antigenicity superior to current treatment against HIV.