Research collaboration – developing new ways of designing vaccines for flaviviruses such as Zika

Immunitrack and the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool are working together to develop new ways of designing vaccines for flaviviruses such as Zika

The Project

Designing effective vaccines for flaviviruses is not an easy task. Utilizing their novel epitope discovery technology, Immunitrack and researchers at the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool will team up to develop new ways of generating vaccines that will elicit a strong immune response. Preliminary work is ongoing to determine whether the epitope predictions from the NeoScreen^® platform match with in vivo results from mice immunized with various Zika proteins. The results from this work would provide a powerful proof-of-concept for the NeoScreen^® prediction tool and open a new avenue for synthesizing vaccines using epitope predictions.

Quote from Professor Neil French, University of Liverpool: “Immunitrack retains a novel technology for epitope selection and if these pilot experiments work, we may have an exciting way to design vaccines.”

About Immunitrack

Immunitrack’s mission is to provide the research community with tools to select or redesign drug candidates at the early stage of R&D but also to provide reagents to monitor lead drug candidates’ effects on a patient’s immune system. Immunitrack’s unique NeoScreen^® platform encompasses both affinity and stability assessments of MHC-epitope interactions, allowing identification of the best neo-epitope candidates in vitro, from peptide libraries that contain thousands of potential neo-epitopes. Immunitrack is also currently developing a best-in-class neo-epitope prediction tool, PrDx^TM, which is trained on in vitro data generated through the NeoScreen^® platform. Read here for more information >>

About the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool

For more than one hundred years, Liverpool has had a leading international reputation in infection research, tropical medicine and global health. The Institute of Infection and Global Health examines clinical, biological and epidemiological aspects of infectious as well as some non-communicable diseases, and considers their wider impact on human society and animal welfare. The Institute integrates medical and veterinary research to put Liverpool at the forefront of the ‘one health’ agenda.

For more information please visit: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/infection-and-global-health