Development of a novel platform of virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccine against COVID-19 by exposing epitopes: an immunoinformatics approach

The emergence of a rapidly spreading and highly infectious coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak by a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has caused a global pandemic with unprecedented social and economic dimensions. Therefore, the development of effective strategies is urgent to control the COVID-19 outbreak. According to recent investigations, cell entry of coronaviruses relies on binding of the viral spike glycoprotein to the host cellular receptors. Therefore, the present study aimed to predict immunogenic epitopes in silico by analysing the spike protein. In parallel, by screening the immunogenic SARS-CoV-2 spike-derived epitopes provided in the literature, we chose a set of epitopes that we believed would induce immunogenic response. Next, provided with the epitopes selected by using both approaches, we performed immunoinformatic analysis that mapped identically to the antigen regions and antigenic properties. Finally, after selecting a screened set of epitopes, we designed a novel virus-like particle vaccine optimized to be produced in plants by using molecular farming biotechnology techniques. Our assay may be used as a starting point for guiding experimental efforts towards the development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.

Epidemiology of herpes simplex and varicella zoster virus in cerebrospinal fluid of patients suffering from meningitis in Iran

From the early 18th century that “meningitis” outbreak was firstly recorded in Geneva, it is one of the alarming health problems worldwide. Different infectious risk factors may contribute to the progression of meningitis. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) and Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) are just some noticeable risk factors among many involved in the progression of this disease. In this study, 415 meningitis suspected patients were recruited with some symptoms, such as fever, headache, nausea or vomiting, seizure, rash, dizziness from four different hospitals of Iran and molecular examinations of samples were performed by using specific primers of HSV½ and VZV via real-time PCR. Out of 415 included patient 41 (9.8 %) were VZV and six (1.4 %) cases were HSV ½ positive. Fever was the most frequent symptom by 315 (76 %) of patients with median temperature of 38 °C in all included patients. The median WBS counts of CSF in VZV positive, HSV½ positive, and all included cases were 1567 × 10⁶ /L, 1257 × 10⁶ /L, and 766 × 10⁶ /L (range 0-21200), respectively. In conclusion, as the rate of VZV infection was high among children patients and it was associated with the absence of vaccination program for chickenpox in Iran, we suggested that VZV is one of the plausible hallmarks in meningitis.

Clinical characteristics and molecular epidemiology of children with meningitis in Tehran, Iran: a prospective study

The molecular epidemiology of meningitis in children is unclear in Iran, and data are scarce. We aimed to characterize its clinical and paraclinical features as well as to determine the distribution of genotype/capsular types of common bacterial meningitis agents in children in Iran. All children suspected to have meningitis aged 4 days to 15 years were enrolled onto a prospective cross-sectional study from January 2015 to September 2017. Diagnostic values of clinical features, cerebrospinal fluid and serum parameters were evaluated independently and in combination with each other by multivariate logistic regression to develop a diagnostic rule. Genotype/capsular types of all the isolates were determined by targeting serotype-specific genes with uniplex or multiplex PCR. Among 119 patients suspected of having meningitis, 43 had bacterial meningitis, 19 aseptic and one tuberculous; and there were 56 nonmeningitis cases (NMC). Presentation of four features at the same time-cerebrospinal fluid white blood cell count, protein, polymorphonuclear leukocytes and serum C-reactive protein-revealed 100% sensitivity and 86.4% specificity for diagnosis of bacterial meningitis. Haemophilus influenzae type b (60%), Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 3 (28.5%) and Neisseria meningitidis B (63.5%) were the most prevalent serotypes. This study demonstrated that a well-designed combination of clinical and paraclinical features is useful, but these combinations are not good enough to be relied on as stand-alone exclusionary tests for the diagnosis of bacterial meningitis. In addition, public immunization of infants with the most prevalent bacterial meningitis serotypes is recommended.