An Update on "Reverse Vaccinology": The Pathway from Genomes and Epitope Predictions to Tailored, Recombinant Vaccines

Abstract

In this chapter, we review the computational approaches that have led to a new generation of vaccines in recent years. There are many alternative routes to develop vaccines based on the concept of reverse vaccinology. They all follow the same basic principles-mining available genome and proteome information for antigen candidates, and recombinantly expressing them for vaccine production. Some of the same principles have been used successfully for cancer therapy approaches. In this review, we focus on infectious diseases, describing the general workflow from bioinformatic predictions of antigens and epitopes down to examples where such predictions have been used successfully for vaccine development.

Keywords: Core genome; Epitope prediction; Peptide epitopes; Reverse vaccinology; Surface proteins; Vaccine design.