RESUMO
Large-scale study of the properties of T-cell receptor (TCR) and B-cell receptor (BCR) repertoires through next-generation sequencing is providing excellent insights into the understanding of adaptive immune responses. Variable(Diversity)Joining [V(D)J] germline genes and alleles must be characterized in detail to facilitate repertoire analyses. However, most species do not have well-characterized TCR/BCR germline genes because of their high homology. Also, more germline alleles are required for humans and other species, which limits the capacity for studying immune repertoires. Herein, we developed "Immune Germline Prediction" (IMPre), a tool for predicting germline V/J genes and alleles using deep-sequencing data derived from TCR/BCR repertoires. We developed a new algorithm, "Seed_Clust," for clustering, produced a multiway tree for assembly and optimized the sequence according to the characteristics of rearrangement. We trained IMPre on human samples of T-cell receptor beta (TRB) and immunoglobulin heavy chain and then tested it on additional human samples. Accuracy of 97.7, 100, 92.9, and 100% was obtained for TRBV, TRBJ, IGHV, and IGHJ, respectively. Analyses of subsampling performance for these samples showed IMPre to be robust using different data quantities. Subsequently, IMPre was tested on samples from rhesus monkeys and human long sequences: the highly accurate results demonstrated IMPre to be stable with animal and multiple data types. With rapid accumulation of high-throughput sequence data for TCR and BCR repertoires, IMPre can be applied broadly for obtaining novel genes and a large number of novel alleles. IMPre is available at https://github.com/zhangwei2015/IMPre.
RESUMO
This review focuses on a dengue virus (DENV) vaccine candidate based on a recombinant subunit approach which targets the DENV envelope glycoprotein (E). Truncated versions of E consisting of the N-terminal portion of E (DEN-80E) have been expressed recombinantly in the Drosophila S2 expression system and shown to have native-like conformation. Preclinical studies demonstrate that formulations containing tetravalent DEN-80E adjuvanted with ISCOMATRIX™ adjuvant induce high titer virus neutralizing antibodies and IFN-γ producing T cells in flavivirus-naïve non-human primates. The preclinical data further suggest that administration of such formulations on a 0, 1, 6 month schedule may result in higher maximum virus neutralizing antibody titers and better durability of those titers compared to administration on a 0, 1, 2 month schedule. In addition, the virus neutralizing antibody titers induced by adjuvanted tetravalent DEN-80E compare favorably to the titers induced by a tetravalent live virus comparator. Furthermore, DEN-80E was demonstrated to be able to boost virus neutralizing antibody titers in macaques that have had a prior DENV exposure. A monovalent version of the vaccine candidate, DEN1-80E, was formulated with Alhydrogel™ and studied in a proof-of-principle Phase I clinical trial by Hawaii Biotech, Inc. (NCT00936429). The clinical trial results demonstrate that both the 10 µg and 50 µg formulations of DEN1-80E with 1.25 mg of elemental aluminum were immunogenic when administered in a 3-injection series (0, 1, 2 months) to healthy, flavivirus-naïve adults. The vaccine formulations induced DENV-1 neutralizing antibodies in the majority of subjects, although the titers in most subjects were modest and waned over time. Both the 10 µg DEN1-80E and the 50 µg DEN1-80E formulations with Alhydrogel™ were generally well tolerated.