Bihar doctors 'find' Zika vaccine proteins

Patna: Patna-based Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (RMRIMS), a research institute of Indian Council of Medical Research, has claimed to have developed the first hypothesis of peptide-based Zika virus in India. In layman’s terms, it has prepared a formula for lab investigators to work on the creation of a vaccine against the deadly virus that has hit, according to WHO, populations in 70 countries.
A Hyderabad-based firm had earlier applied for patent for Zika vaccine. However, RMRIMS sources said, the two vaccines are different in that the Hyderabad firm’s vaccine will induce the very virus in the body to create immunity against it whereas the RMRIMS’s hypothesis has identified the particular proteins of the virus that create immunity. Therefore, only these proteins will need to be induced in the Zika-affected body.
“Also, ours should be a more cost-effective vaccine,” an RMRIMS researcher said on Friday and added the RMRIMS’s reserach manuscript, titled ‘A First Step Towards Vaccine Development’, is in the press; that is, it has been sent for publication in Elsevier’s international journal, ‘Infection, Genetics and Evolution’.
India has so far not reported any case, but 13 Indians in Singapore recently reported positive for the virus.
According to Patna-based RMRIMS’s researchers, they have developed the hypothesis using the online database of proteins of Zika virus made available by US-funded National Centre for Biotechnology Information. The virus has certain proteins and every protein has been fragmented into peptide, also known as epitope. A software identified 63 epitopes in different proteins of Zika virus. The epitopes bind with a particular type of cells already present in human body to create immunity against the virus, they said.
The researchers have identified 42 such cells called ‘human leukocyte antigens’ (HLA) with which these epitopes bind to create immunity. After this, the combination of HLA and epitopes reach the ‘T’ cells of the body, which finally create immunity against the Zika virus, the RMRIMS researchers explained.
Of the 63 epitopes identified initially, nine epitopes of four proteins of Zika virus have been shortlisted by the RMRIMS researchers.
The utility of an epitope is assessed through, what the RMRIMS said, “conservancy”. It is that part or the fragment of the epitope which actually binds with human cells to create immunity. The bigger the conservancy, the better the epitope. The RMRIMS researchers claim that the epitiopes identified by them have 100% ‘conservancy’; that is, every fragment of the identified epitopes will create immunity.
Experts point out the Zika virus was found to have different strains in different counties. Another challenge during the RMRIMS’s research was, therefore, to identify epitopes that would cover the maximum population.
“A team of 13 researchers led by RMRIMS director Dr Pradeep Das studied 30 strains of the virus. The combination of select epitopes was found to account for an optimal coverage of the worldwide population (more than 99%), independent of ethnicity,” Dr Ganesh C Sahoo, one of the researchers, told TOI on Friday.