ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Vaccines and Molecular Therapeutics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1587224
Immuno-informatics Analyses of Important Esophageal Cancer (EC) Associated Viruses for Multi-Epitope Vaccine Design
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Clinical Medical Laboratories, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Shaqra University, Shaqra, Saudi Arabia
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Esophageal cancer (EC) is a tremendously lethal disease characterized by the uncontrollable multiplication of malignant cells inside the esophagus, a muscled channel that transports food and liquids from the throat to the stomach. Even though there has been recent progress in the methods of treatment, the general prognosis is still poor, and therefore, early detection and novel treatment plans are extremely important. Here, bioinformatics and immunoinformatics tools were used to design a new epitope based multi-epitope vaccine for prevention of EC. The antigenicity of ten viral protein sequences associated with EC was determined using the VaxiJen server with data from the UniProt database. Five highly antigenic proteins were chosen for further analysis, aiming at viral agents associated with EC pathogenesis including, Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV), Human Papillomavirus (HPV), Human Herpesvirus 8(HHV-8), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). Epitope prediction determined readily available T cell (helper and cytotoxic) and B cell (linear) epitopes. The end vaccine construct incorporated three helper T lymphocyte epitopes (HTL), 8 cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes (CTL), and 8 linear B cell (LBL) with β-defensin as the adjuvant to enhance immune stimulation. Safety assessments have found the construct to be non-allergenic, antigenic; and safe to use. Molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulations were therefore performed in this paper to determine the binding affinity between the Vaccine and TLR3. In addition, the expression potency of the vaccine was confirmed by the use of the pET-28a(+) vector system within Escherichia coli (strain K12). The result implies that this multi-epitope vaccine may be promising as a preventive measure against viral contributors to EC. However additional validation through in vivo and in vitro experimentation is necessary to validate its prophylactic efficacy.
Keywords: esophageal cancer, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Human papillomavirus (HPV), Human cytomegalovirus (hcmv), Molecular Docking Simulation, Multi-epitope vaccine. 1.Introduction
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 14 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Al Shehri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zafer Saad Al Shehri, Department of Clinical Medical Laboratories, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Shaqra University, Shaqra, Saudi Arabia
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