Computational Epitope Design for Protective Vaccines

Abstract

We propose to develop and validate a new Rosetta vaccine design platform for rapid computational epitope design combined with a novel next-generation protein nanoparticle strategy to display the designed immunogens as nucleotide based (DNA, RNA) or recombinant protein vaccines, amenable to rapid and cost-effective manufacture. Our immunogen design platform will incorporate next-generation genomic sequence (NGS) data from emerging pathogens to design (i) full-length pathogen surface proteins and (ii) smaller peptide immunogens. In either case their amino acid sequences will be "scrubbed" to eliminate decoy epitopes that can mask conserved functional epitopes or contribute to host mimicry, and will be presented in stabilized structures that mimic functional parts of the pathogen to elicit highly functional neutralizing antibody responses while reducing responses against non-neutralizing epitopes. Our aims are directly applicable to the HDTRA1-11-21-BRCWMD-BAA PerF-Topic 10, Thrust Area 3 announcement

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jan 23, 2018
Source ID
HDTRA11810001

Entities

People

  • David Baker

Organizations

  • Defense Threat Reduction Agency
  • University of Washington

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Immunology
  • Molecular Genetics

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology