title: Time for T? Immunoinformatics addresses vaccine design for neglected tropical and emerging infectious diseases.
abstract: Vaccines have been invaluable for global health, saving lives and reducing healthcare costs, while also raising the quality of human life. However, newly emerging infectious diseases (EID) and more well-established tropical disease pathogens present complex challenges to vaccine developers; in particular, neglected tropical diseases, which are most prevalent among the world's poorest, include many pathogens with large sizes, multistage life cycles and a variety of nonhuman vectors. EID such as MERS-CoV and H7N9 are highly pathogenic for humans. For many of these pathogens, while their genomes are available, immune correlates of protection are currently unknown. These complexities make developing vaccines for EID and neglected tropical diseases all the more difficult. In this review, we describe the implementation of an immunoinformatics-driven approach to systematically search for key determinants of immunity in newly available genome sequence data and design vaccines. This approach holds promise for the development of 21st century vaccines, improving human health everywhere.
authors.affiliation: EpiVax, Inc., 146 Clifford St, Providence, RI 02903, USA.
authors.forename: Frances E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Terry
authors.forename: Leonard
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Moise
authors.forename: Rebecca F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pilotte
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Anne S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: De Groot
mesh_terms: D021821:Communicable Diseases, Emerging / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D058069:Neglected Diseases / Q000276:immunology* / Q000517:prevention & control*; D014329:Tropical Climate; D014612:Vaccines / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification*
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines
keywords: Brugia malayi; EID; EpiMatrix; JanusMatrix; MHC; NTD; T cell; TCR; computational vaccinology; filarial; immunogenicity; immunoinformatics; immunomics; tregitope