How could artificial intelligence aid in the fight against coronavirus?

Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy

Yassine, Hadi M.; Shah, Zubair.

Do you believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is the key to a cure for the coronavirus?

Dr Hadi: Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the means or avenues to understand the virus and develop preventative and control measures. This includes but is not limited to: the usage of mathematical modeling to understand virus transmission, structural biology to determine virus structure and develop vaccines, computational biology to understand virus evolution, as well as docking studies to screen for drugs and inhibitors

Keywords

COVID19, Artificial Intelligence, In-silico, Vaccines, Emerging Diseases

MERS-CoV spike protein: Targets for vaccines and therapeutics

Antiviral Research
Volume 133, September 2016, Pages 165-177

Qihui Wang, Gary Wong, Guangwen Lu, Jinghua Yan, George F. Gao

Abstract

The disease outbreak caused by Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is still ongoing in the Middle East. Over 1700 people have been infected since it was first reported in September 2012. Despite great efforts, licensed vaccines or therapeutics against MERS-CoV remain unavailable. The MERS-CoV spike (S) protein is an important viral antigen known to mediate host-receptor binding and virus entry, as well as induce robust humoral and cell-mediated responses in humans during infection. In this review, we highlight the importance of the S protein in the MERS-CoV life cycle, summarize recent advances in the development of vaccines and therapeutics based on the S protein, and discuss strategies that can be explored to develop new medical countermeasures against MERS-CoV.

Keywords

Coronavirus, MERS-CoV, Spike protein, Vaccines, Therapeutics, Animal models

Priming with SARS CoV S DNA and boosting with SARS CoV S epitopes specific for CD4+ and CD8+ T cells promote cellular immune responses

Vaccine
Volume 25, Issues 39–40, 28 September 2007, Pages 6981-6991

Jun Huang, Yingnan Cao, Jiali Du, Xianzhang Bu, Rui Ma, Changyou Wu.

Abstract

Cellular immune response plays an important role in antiviral immunity. In our previous study, immunization of mice with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS CoV) spike (S) DNA vaccine could induce both humoral and cellular immunity in response to a pool of entire overlapping S peptides. Identification of functional dominant epitopes in SARS CoV S protein for T cells is crucial for further understanding of cellular immune responses elicited by SARS CoV S DNA vaccine. In present study, mice were immunized with SARS CoV S DNA vaccine. Subsequently, a pool of 17–19 mers overlapped SARS CoV S peptides, which served as immunogens, were scanned to identify the specific epitopes for T cells. Two H-2d restricted CD4+ T epitopes, N60 (S435–444) and P152 (S1111–1127), and two H-2d restricted CD8+ T cell epitopes, N50 (S365–374) and P141 (S1031–1047) were identified by three different methods, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), enzyme linked immunospot assay (ELISPOT) and fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS). The dominant CD4+ T cell epitope (N60) and CD8+ T cell epitope (N50) located in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS CoV S protein, which mediated virus combining and fusing to susceptible cells. Importantly, our novel finding is that mice primed with SARS S DNA vaccine and boosted with T cell epitopes (N50 and N60) could promote antigen specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell immune responses. Our study provides valuable information for the design of vaccine for SARS study.

Keywords

SARS CoV, T cells, Epitope, Vaccines