title: EpiCombFlu: exploring known influenza epitopes and their combination to design a universal influenza vaccine.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Influenza is responsible for half a million deaths annually, and vaccination is the best preventive measure against this pervasive health problem. Influenza vaccines developed from surveillance data of each season are strain-specific, and therefore, are unable to provide protection against pandemic strains arising from antigenic shift and drift. Seasonal epidemics and occasional pandemics of influenza have created a need for a universal influenza vaccine (UIV). Researchers have shown that a combination of conserved epitopes has the potential to be used as a UIV.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the present work, available data on strains, proteins, epitopes and their associated information were used to develop a Web resource, 'EpiCombFlu', which can explore different influenza epitopes and their combinations for conservation among different strains, population coverage and immune response for vaccine design. Forward selection algorithm was implemented in EpiCombFlu to select optimum combination of epitopes that may be expressed and evaluated as potential UIV.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The Web resource is freely available at http://117.211.115.67/influenza/home.html.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  chittaranjan.rout@juit.ac.in
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, Solan, Himachal Pradesh 173234, India.
authors.forename: Varun
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Jaiswal
authors.forename: Sree K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Chanumolu
authors.forename: Pankaj
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Rajinder S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Chauhan
authors.forename: Chittaranjan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rout
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000939:Epitopes / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D007252:Influenza Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D020407:Internet; D009975:Orthomyxoviridae / Q000145:classification / Q000276:immunology; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D012984:Software; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D000939:Epitopes; D007252:Influenza Vaccines; D014764:Viral Proteins