Background. A new endemic disease has spread across Wuhan City, China, in December 2019. Within few weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a novel coronavirus designated as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). In late January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of a “public‐health emergency of international concern” due to the rapid and increasing spread of the disease worldwide. Currently, there is no vaccine or approved treatment for this emerging infection; thus, the objective of this study is to design a multiepitope peptide vaccine against COVID‐19 using an immunoinformatics approach. Method. Several techniques facilitating the combination of the immunoinformatics approach and comparative genomic approach were used in order to determine the potential peptides for designing the T‐cell epitope‐based peptide vaccine using the envelope protein of 2019‐nCoV as a target. Results. Extensive mutations, insertion, and deletion were discovered with comparative sequencing in the COVID‐19 strain. Additionally, ten peptides binding to MHC class I and MHC class II were found to be promising candidates for vaccine design with adequate world population coverage of 88.5% and 99.99%, respectively. Conclusion. The T‐cell epitope‐based peptide vaccine was designed for COVID‐19 using the envelope protein as an immunogenic target. Nevertheless, the proposed vaccine rapidly needs to be validated clinically in order to ensure its safety and immunogenic profile to help stop this epidemic before it leads to devastating global outbreaks.

Background on the late December 2019, a new endemic has been spread across Wuhan City, China; within a few weeks, a novel coronavirus designated as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was announced by the World Health Organization (WHO). In late January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak a “public-health emergency of international concern” due to the rapid spreading and increasing worldwide. There is no vaccine or approved treatment for this emerging infection; therefore, the objective of this paper is to design a multi epitope peptide vaccine against 2019-nCoV using immunoinformatics approach. Method We will highlight a technique facilitating the combination of immunoinformatics approach with comparative genomic approach to determine our potential target for designing the T cell epitopes-based peptide vaccine using the envelope protein of 2019-nCoV as a target. Results Extensive mutations, insertion and deletion were discovered with comparative sequencing in 2019-nCoV strain; in addition, 10 MHC1 and MHC2 related peptides were promising candidates for vaccine design with adequate world population coverage of 88.5% and 99.99% respectively. Conclusion T cell epitopes-based peptide vaccine was designed for 2019-nCoV using envelope protein as an immunogenic target; nevertheless, the proposed T cell epitopes-based peptide vaccine rapidly needs to validates clinically to ensure its safety and immunogenic profile to assist on stopping this epidemic before it leads to devastating global outbreaks.

A new approach toward cancer therapy is the use of cancer vaccine, yet the different molecular bases of cancers, reduce the effectiveness of this approach. In this article, we aim to use matrix metalloproteinase-9 protein (MMP9) which is an essential molecule in the survival and metastasis of all types of cancers as a target for universal cancer vaccine design. The reference sequence of MMP9 protein was obtained from NCBI databases. Furthermore, the B-cell and T cell-related peptides were analyzed using the IEDB website and other related soft wares. The best candidate peptides were then visualized using chimera software. Three peptides were found to be good candidates for interactions with B cells (SLPE, RLYT, and PALPR), while 10 peptides were found as good targets for interactions with MHC1 and another 10 peptides founded suitable for interactions with MHC2 with population coverages of 94.77 and 90.67%, respectively. Finally, the immune response simulation and molecular docking were done using the C-IMMSIM simulator and AutoDock Vina to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed vaccine. By the end of this project: twenty-three peptide-based vaccine was designed for use as a universal cancer vaccine which has a high world population coverage for MHC1 (94.77%) and MHC2 (90.67%) related alleles.

Background. Hereditary spastic paraplegia type 3A (SPG3A) is a neurodegenerative disease inherited type of Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). It is the second most frequent type of HSP which is characterized by progressive bilateral and mostly symmetric spasticity and weakness of the legs. SPG3A gene mutations and the phenotype-genotype correlations have not yet been recognized. The aim of this work was to categorize the most damaging SNPs in ATL1 gene and to predict their impact on the functional and structural levels by several computational analysis tools. Methods. The raw data of ATL1 gene were retrieved from dbSNP database and then run into numerous computational analysis tools. Additionally; we submitted the common six deleterious outcomes from the previous functional analysis tools to I-mutant 3.0 and MUPro, respectively, to investigate their effect on the structural level. The 3D structure of ATL1 was predicted by RaptorX and modeled using UCSF Chimera to compare the differences between the native and the mutant amino acids. Results. Five nsSNPs out of 249 were classified as the most deleterious (rs746927118, rs979765709, rs119476049, rs864622269, and rs1242753115). Conclusions. In this study, the impact of nsSNPs in the ATL1 gene was investigated by various in silico tools that revealed five nsSNPs (V67F, T120I, R217Q, R495W, and G504E) are deleterious SNPs, which have a functional impact on ATL1 protein and, therefore, can be used as genomic biomarkers specifically before 4 years of age; also, it may play a key role in pharmacogenomics by evaluating drug response for this disabling disease.

Introduction: Inborn errors of immunity (IEI) are disorders that present a health issue, especially in developing countries where there is a high rate of consanguineous marriages and an increasing rate of diagnosis. One of these disorders is Bare Lymphocyte Syndrome II (BLS II) which is a rare and genetically complex disease that has high morbidity and mortality. The exact genotypic and phenotypic characteristics are still poorly characterized especially in developing countries. Case Presentation: Here, we report the first case of BLS II in a seven-month-old Sudanese female with recurrent chest infections, dermatitis, persistent diarrhea, and failure to thrive. The patient’s all four sisters and three paternal uncles died in early infancy. Laboratory investigations revealed low CD3+, CD4+, and CD8+ lymphocytes, along with normal CD19+ and CD16+ lymphocytes, and low serum IgM and IgA levels. Genetic analysis revealed two CIITA variants; c.2296C >G p. (Pro766Ala) and c.439+1G >A. Conclusion: Further bioinformatics, immunological and clinical workups supported a pathogenic effect of both mutations affecting the function of CIITA protein, and suggesting a compound heterozygote mutation. The patient was started on prophylactic antibiotics and regular intravenous immunoglobulin replacement therapy. The prognosis of this disease is poor in most of the cases, with only a few reported cases surviving until adulthood.