Computational Vaccinology: An Important Strategy to Discover New PotentialS. mansoniVaccine Candidates

Abstract

The flatwormSchistosoma mansoniis a blood fluke parasite that causes schistosomiasis, a debilitating disease that occurs throughout the developing world. Current schistosomiasis control strategies are mainly based on chemotherapy, but many researchers believe that the best long-term strategy to control schistosomiasis is through immunization with an antischistosomiasis vaccine combined with drug treatment. Several papers onSchistosoma mansonivaccine and drug development have been published in the past few years, representing an important field of study. The advent of technologies that allow large-scale studies of genes and proteins had a remarkable impact on the screening of new and potential vaccine candidates in schistosomiasis. In this postgenomic scenario, bioinformatic technologies have emerged as important tools to mine transcriptomic, genomic, and proteomic databases. These new perspectives are leading to a new round of rational vaccine development. Herein, we discuss different strategies to identify potentialS. mansonivaccine candidates using computational vaccinology.