In silico Prediction and in vitro Verification of a Novel Multi-Epitope Antigen for HBV Detection

Abstract

After years of ongoing endeavors for HBV infection prognosis, diagnosis and treatment, it still remains a major health problem worldwide. About 400 million chronic carriers and an annual death rate as high as one million reflects the seriousness of the problem. Developing novel and more effective diagnostic strategies, using in silico approaches and their subsequent empirical verification, will be helpful in providing for blood supply safety, therapeutics efficacy and disease activity assessment. Exploiting various in silico tools a novel multiepitope detection construct was designed which was consisted of eight linked linear immunodominant HBV epitopes. The designed antigen was expressed in Escherichia coli as the host. The detection capability of the designed antigen was tested using Chemiluminescent immunoassay method. Chemiluminescent immunoassay on the expressed antigen revealed that the product may be a credible candidate for simultaneous detection of three main HBV antibodies. All three test samples in two concentrations indicated lower RLU/s in comparison to the positive control which was the direct consequence of HBV antibody detection by the designed antigen. In the present study, employing bioinformatics tools paved the way for rational design of multiepitope antigen in a more cost effective, intelligent and knowledge-based method. The obtained results could be construed as a primary proof of concept that the in silico predictions could be used as primary steps of the biological studies and their subsequent empirical conduction.