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ABSTRACT
Background
Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection remains a critical public health concern, especially in low- and middle-income countries with high mortality and morbidity due to complications such as chronic liver failure and hepatocellular carcinoma. Although prophylactic vaccines and antiviral therapies exist, they do not achieve viral clearance in chronically infected individuals. There is a pressing need for therapeutic vaccines that elicit strong, long-lasting immune responses. This study utilizes bioinformatics tools to identify B and T cell epitopes from HBV genotypes A and D, common in Africa, to contribute to the design of next-generation therapeutic vaccines.
Method
Complete genome sequences of HBV genotypes A and D were downloaded from the NCBI database. T cell epitopes binding to HLA class I and II alleles were predicted using NetMHCPan4.1 and NetMHCIIpan4.1. The antigenicity score of the predicted epitopes was analysed using Vaxijen V2.0, immunogenicity and conservancy of predicted epitopes were analysed using IEDB. Toxicity and allergenicity were predicted using ToxinPred and AllerTOP, respectively.
Result
A high number of epitopes were predicted from genotype A as compared to genotype D for both T cells (HLA I and HLA II) and B cells. For conservation analysis, only predicted antigenic epitopes were selected, and a few epitopes for HLA class I were found to be conserved in different genotypes and bind with high affinity with the HLA class I and II alleles common in South Africa.
Conclusion
The predicted conserved epitopes analysed in this study using the cutting-edge immunoinformatic tools will assist in the development of future HBV therapeutic vaccines and act as immunodiagnostic markers. By focusing on genotypes prevalent in Africa, these findings contribute to locally relevant solutions for HBV control. Further studies to validate the predicted epitopes will be conducted to explore the clinical utility of these epitopes.