Title : Informatics approach to assess mumps vaccination
Abstract:
Despite the high success of mumps vaccination as a public health measure, mumps outbreaks have been described in the United States. Differences in antibody cross-neutralization potential induced by the mumps vaccine (Jeryl-Lynn strain) has been pointed out as one of the reasons for these outbreaks. Immunoinformatic approaches have been shown to be valuable in the identification of B- and T-cell epitopes. In order to shed light on the cross-reactivity potential of the current mumps vaccine, we developed high-throughput computational workflows for B- and T-cell epitope identification and comparison using available informatic tools. The B-cell epitope prediction results agreed with empirical methods. Nevertheless, the T-cell epitope prediction results did not agree with the empirical data. The present workflow facilitated the analysis and comparison of circulating mumps virus sequences. In a yearly evaluation, the average number of mutations in the HN proteins did not increase since 2013. These results support the continuous evaluation of the mumps vaccine.
