Epitope Mapping of Capsid Protein L1 from Human Papillomavirus to Development Cervical Cancer Vaccine through Computational Study

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a virus that plays an important role in the occurrence of cervical cancer, HPV is a member of the family papovaviridae, genus papillomavirus. The HPV gene is composed of two parts: early and late gene. Early proteins in HPV include E1, E2, E4, E5, E6, and E7 Late gene expressed from the late promoter acting as coders for L1 and L2 protein capsid. The L1 protein has a conserved region composed of cysteine and lysine residues, both of which have involved in the binding process between virions and host receptors. Previous research has shown that vaccines can be developed based on epitopes that have conserved areas. This study is important to identify conserved protein sequences in L1 of HPV capsid, predict epitope mapping of B cells and antigenicity in the conserved region of L1 HPV capsid, as well as the similarity of amino acid residues of epitope composers with surface receptors of human body cells. The conserved areas were identified in L1 HPV as a potential epitope of B cells based on epitope mapping analysis of positions 23-46 and 97-119 with EGRGQPLGGSGHPNDDE DRDKQ and RHNGGPGPSGSSQFNKPYWAQGN peptides and each had a peptide length of 22-mer and 23-mer. The 97-119 epitope has a high antigenicity score and the similarity of the low amino acid residue sequence to the cell surface receptor of the human body. So the 23-mer RHNGGPGPSGSSQFNKPYWAQGN peptide can be used as a reference for the development of cervical cancer prevention vaccine.