Designing a Peptide-dendrimer for Use as a Synthetic Vaccine Against Plasmodium falciparum

This work presents anew computational analysis using post-genomic data in order to design a new vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum, a parasite responsible for malaria. It is based on a poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) eight-branched dendrimeric structure integrating B cell epitopes. To do so, all available experimental epitopes were identified, either stored in databases or bibliographic references, and analysed by means of bioinformatictools for obtaining consensus epitopes up to six amino acids in length. An eight-branched tertiary structure integrating the consensus epitopes is proposed using a molecular mechanics tool. This computational technique could also be applied to other infectious agents as well as tumour antigens.