Special Issue "Therapeutic and Diagnostic Applications of Structural Vaccinology"
A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 4030
Special Issue Editor
Interests: X-ray crystallography; protein antigens; structural vaccinology; biocatalysis; structure-function relationships
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Never has there been a more pertinent time to underline the importance of new vaccine development and rapid disease diagnosis. Structural vaccinology (SV) methods that combine high-resolution structural biology techniques with computational biology and immunological validation, can drive the design of better, protein-based vaccine components, endowed with improved biochemical and/or immunological properties. Among the many applications, structure-based antigen engineering can allow us to map epitope regions, block specific antigen conformations that induce pathogen-neutralizing antibodies or can permit us to define the boundaries of protective epitope containing regions/domains, for more facile, large scale production. Furthermore, the availability of antigen structures, alone and in antibody complexes, has fuelled the development of eloquent computational epitope prediction and antigen design methods that have achieved optimum levels of accuracy, representing essential tools for vaccine design. Vaccine components can have secondary uses as serological diagnostic markers that detect their cognate antibodies, induced in subjects with prior exposure to the related pathogen. Presentation of diagnostic epitopes or whole antigens belonging to different infection stages and diseases can spur the design of Multiplex diagnostic tests, capable of rapidly detecting multiple diseases and infection progress. Recent advances in single particle cryo-electron microscopy and the ability to solve the structures of larger, more complex antigen structures will inevitably provide an increased repertoire of available antigen (and antigen-antibody) structures; therefore, examples of SV are likely to increase in the near future. In this context, this Special Issue summarizes the current applications of Structural Vaccinology to both the design of novel therapeutics (vaccines) and diagnostics.
Prof. Louise J. Gourlay
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Structure-based antigen engineering
- vaccine design
- epitope-based diagnostic biomarkers
- structural vaccinology
- protein antigens