Immunopathogenesis and Vaccine Development: From Dengue to COVID-19 9216

Abstract Description Elderly patients with comorbidities during pandemics of dengue or COVID-19 have been at greater risk of severe illness/fatality. As the incidence of dengue has increased more than thirty-fold globally over the past fifty years and immunity to one serotype of dengue viruses (DENV-1 to DENV-4) may not protect against infection by other serotypes, secondary infection from heterologous DENV serotypes could even elevate immunopathogenesis and increase the risk of dengue severity. By analyzing NS1 (non-structural protein 1), the most important protein in both immnoprotection and immnopathogenesis, using the ViPR database, we found that: (1) the conserved region of NS1 among DENV-1, 2, and 3 serotypes is located in the β-ladder domain; (2) the Wing domain of DENV NS1 protein had the highest amino acid (a.a.) variation; (3) different DENV serotypes vary in different domains of the NS1 protein, DENV-4 had the highest a.a. variation% in all the three domains of the NS1 protein, while DENV-1 and DENV-2 had the highest a.a. variations in the Wing domain, DENV-3 showed the greatest a.a. variation in the β-ladder domain; and DENV-4 revealed the widest a.a. variation in the β-roll domain; and (4) the immune-epitope results also showed DENV serotype-specific a.a. residues. Through international collaboration, these analyses can be extended to dominant SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating across different epidemic periods/sites to accelerate the development of a universal COVID-vaccine. Topic Categories Microbial, Parasitic, and Fungal Immunology (MPF)