@article{Saxena_Christy H._2014, title={EPITOPE PREDICTION AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF PRA ANTIGEN OF COCCIDIOIDES}, volume={6}, url={https://journals.innovareacademics.in/index.php/ijpps/article/view/1967}, abstractNote={<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Coccidioidomycosis is a life threatening human respiratory disease caused by <em>Coccidioides immitis</em> and <em>C. posadasii</em>. <em>As the incidence of symptomatic </em>Coccidioidomycosis increases worldwide, vaccine development strategy against <em>Coccidioides </em><em>is needed for both immunocompetent and immunocompromized individuals. An insight about </em>PRA antigens in the pathogenesis of Coccidioidomycosis has the potential to develop a therapeutic intervention.</p> <p><strong>Methods: </strong>In this study of ANN, SMM and QM based servers were used to predict promiscuous epitopes. Epitope structures were modeled using De novo based PEPFOLD server and minimized using Swiss model server. Further the modeled epitopes were tested for their binding affinity towards HLA alleles by means of peptide protein docking studies involving autodock.</p> <p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of six antigenic epitopes ARISVSNIV, GRPTASTPA, ALNLFVEAL, LVAAGLASA, FSHALJALV, AEPTHEPTE of PRA showed hydrogen bonding with HLA alleles HLA-A*02:03, HLA B*27:05, HLA-A*02:01 with considerable bond distance. Thus, this systematic study on epitopes of <em>Coccidioides </em><em>study would be helpful in designing and developing novel PRA antigen based vaccine and inhibitor.</em></p> <p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>These predicted sequences are potential vaccine candidates but functional/biological assays should be performed to verify whether they are indeed appropriate to be included in a vaccine formulation.</p>}, number={9}, journal={International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences}, author={Saxena, Prashant and Christy H., Jemmy}, year={2014}, month={Sep.}, pages={238–243} }