查看文章

Defining immunogenic domains of viral proteins capable of eliciting a protective immune response is crucial in the development of novel epitope‐based prophylactic strategies. This is particularly important for the selective targeting of conserved regions shared among hypervariable viruses. Studying postinfection and postimmunization sera, as well as cloning and characterization of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), still represents the best approach to identify protective epitopes. In particular, a protective mAb directed against conserved regions can play a key role in immunogen design and in human therapy as well. Experimental approaches aiming to characterize protective mAb epitopes or to identify T‐cell‐activating peptides are often burdened by technical limitations and can require long time to be correctly addressed. Thus, in the last decade many epitope predictive algorithms have been developed. These …