Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025188 (Poster 031) | Published: 30 Jul 2025
Moshood Olamide Lateef1,&, Abideen Titilope Aransi1,2, Dauda Nathaniel3
1Virology and Molecular Diagnostics Unit, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria, 2Department of Virology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, 3Department of Crop Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Nigeria, Nsukka Nigeria
&Corresponding author: Moshood Olamide Lateef, Virology and Molecular Diagnostics Unit, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan. Nigeria, Email: m.lateef@cgiar.org
Received: 25 Apr 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 30 Jul 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Lassa virus, vaccine, broad-protection, Lineage IV, lineage VI
©Moshood Olamide Lateef et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Moshood Olamide Lateef et al., A broad protection vaccine candidate for Lassa virus lineages: Possibility with lineage VI. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00175. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO5-00175
The development of a broadly protective Lassa virus (LASV) vaccine is a critical public health priority. Several promising vaccine candidates are currently in various stages of development; however, most are based on the Josiah strain, which belongs to lineage IV. The extent to which the Josiah strain can confer cross-lineage protection remains uncertain. This study aims to compare representative strains from all known lineages using computational approaches to identify potential candidates for broad-spectrum Lassa virus vaccines.
A representative strain from each Lassa virus lineage was selected based on glycoprotein (GP) and nucleoprotein (NP) amino acid sequences. These sequences were aligned and analyzed using various comparative genomics and proteomics approaches. Analyses were conducted using the Base-by-Base tool, phylogenetic methods, and the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). Epitopes with a percentile rank ≤ 0.5% and binding affinity (IC₅₀) ≤ 50 nM were considered to exclude weak-binding ligands. Furthermore, antigenicity, allergenicity, and toxicity of the predicted epitopes were evaluated using VaxiJen 3.0, AllerTOP v2.1, and ToxinPred 3.0, respectively.
The GP lineage IV (Josiah) and V representatives were 66% immunogenic, which is lower than the 100% observed in other lineages. However, the immunogenicity of the NP is 100% for all the selected strains. Additionally,multiple sequence alignment of the glycoprotein gene revealed a unique codon insertion present only in lineages IV and V. Nonetheless, all lineage representatives were predicted to be non-allergenic and non-toxic and possessed a moderate density of B and T cell epitopes with ≥90% conservancy.
Menu