ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Precision Medicine
Immunoinformatics-Driven Multi-Epitope Vaccine Design Targeting PSMA, STEAP1, and B7H3 for Prostate Cancer
Stefanus Vicky Bernhard Elisa Runtunuwu 1
Trina Ekawati Tallei 1
Hyo Jeong Kim 2
Moon Nyeo Park 2
Ismail Celik 3
Burak Kirilmaz 3
Grace Lendawati Amelia Turalaki 1
Fatimawali Fatimawali 1
Lydia Estelina Naomi Tendean 1
Martha Marie Kaseke 1
Dionisius Rafael Makawaehe 1
Elne Vieke Rambi 4
Bonglee Kim 2
1. Sam Ratulangi University, Manado, Indonesia
2. Kyung Hee University, Dongdaemun-gu, Republic of Korea
3. Erciyes Universitesi, Talas, Türkiye
4. Poltekkes Kemenkes Manado, Manado, Indonesia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
ABSTRACT: Prostate cancer remains a major global health challenge, necessitating precision immunotherapeutic strategies tailored to tumor-associated antigens. This study employed a multi-layered immunoinformatics-driven approach integrating epitope prediction, population coverage analysis, and structural modeling to design a multi-epitope peptide vaccine targeting prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), six-transmembrane epithelial antigen of prostate 1 (STEAP1), and B7-H3, which are three biomarkers strongly associated with prostate cancer progression. Epitopes were selected based on antigenicity, immunogenicity, non-allergenicity, and non-toxicity. The prioritized epitopes were assembled into a vaccine construct using appropriate adjuvants and linkers to enhance immune activation and construct stability. Population coverage analysis was performed to evaluate global HLA allele representation. Molecular docking was conducted to assess binding interactions with B-cell receptors, MHC class I, and MHC class II molecules, while molecular dynamics simulations were performed to examine the structural stability of the final construct. The designed vaccine demonstrated extensive HLA allele coverage (97.51%), strong binding affinity to B-cell receptors and MHC molecules, and favorable structural stability during molecular dynamics simulations. These findings indicate that the proposed multi-epitope vaccine is a promising immunotherapeutic candidate for prostate cancer and merits further experimental validation.
Summary
Keywords
Computational Vaccine Design, immunoinformatics, Immunotherapy, Multi-epitope, precision medicine, prostate cancer, Tumor-associated antigens
Received
30 September 2025
Accepted
09 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Runtunuwu, Tallei, Kim, Park, Celik, Kirilmaz, Turalaki, Fatimawali, Tendean, Kaseke, Makawaehe, Rambi and Kim. 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: Bonglee Kim
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.