title: Inflammatory and autoimmune reactions in atherosclerosis and vaccine design informatics.
abstract: Atherosclerosis is the leading pathological contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality worldwide. As its complex pathogenesis has been gradually unwoven, the regime of treatments and therapies has increased with still much ground to cover. Active research in the past decade has attempted to develop antiatherosclerosis vaccines with some positive results. Nevertheless, it remains to develop a vaccine against atherosclerosis with high affinity, specificity, efficiency, and minimal undesirable pathology. In this review, we explore vaccine development against atherosclerosis by interpolating a number of novel findings in the fields of vascular biology, immunology, and bioinformatics. With recent technological breakthroughs, vaccine development affords precision in specifying the nature of the desired immune response--useful when addressing a disease as complex as atherosclerosis with a manifold of inflammatory and autoimmune components. Moreover, our exploration of available bioinformatic tools for epitope-based vaccine design provides a method to avoid expenditure of excess time or resources.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19140, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jan
authors.forename: Shu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Natalie C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jietang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mai
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiao-Feng
authors.initials: XF
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D050197:Atherosclerosis / Q000276:immunology*; D015551:Autoimmunity / Q000276:immunology; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D015195:Drug Design; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation / Q000276:immunology; D014612:Vaccines / Q000737:chemistry / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines