Abstract
The traditional design of effective vaccines for rapidly-evolving pathogens, such as influenza A virus, has failed to provide broad spectrum and long-lasting protection. With low cost whole genome sequencing technology and powerful computing capabilities, novel computational approaches have demonstrated the potential to facilitate the design of a universal influenza vaccine. However, few studies have integrated computational optimization in the design and discovery of new vaccines. Understanding the potential of computational vaccine design is necessary before these approaches can be implemented on a broad scale. This review summarizes some promising computational approaches under current development, including computationally optimized broadly reactive antigens with consensus sequences, phylogenetic model-based ancestral sequence reconstruction, and immunomics to compute conserved cross-reactive T-cell epitopes. Interactions between virus-host-environment determine the evolvability of the influenza population. We propose that with the development of novel technologies that allow the integration of data sources such as protein structural modeling, host antibody repertoire analysis and advanced phylodynamic modeling, computational approaches will be crucial for the development of a long-lasting universal influenza vaccine. Taken together, computational approaches are powerful and promising tools for the development of a universal influenza vaccine with durable and broad protection.
Highlights
In the history of fighting infectious diseases, vaccinations are amongst the most cost-effective approaches available to prevent infection
This review provides a framework to integrate computational advances that could help in restructuring the existing seasonal influenza vaccine design and contribute to the development of universal influenza vaccine
More systematic computational approaches that go beyond circulating strain prediction and incorporate a full profile of antigens stimulating both humoral and cellular immune responses are needed for universal vaccine design [24,25,26]
Summary
In the history of fighting infectious diseases, vaccinations are amongst the most cost-effective approaches available to prevent infection. Recent approaches to vaccine design have taken advantage of large-scale viral sequencing platforms, phylogenetic frameworks, protein structural modeling and systems biology to design novel broadly-reactive vaccine candidates, which have been used for influenza and other pathogens [2]. These new approaches have revealed insights of viral evolution, transmission dynamics and biological functions of proteins from mountains of genomic data and metadata [2,3,4,5]. This review provides a framework to integrate computational advances that could help in restructuring the existing seasonal influenza vaccine design and contribute to the development of universal influenza vaccine
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