Abstract—A significant percentage of the human population does not respond well to commercially available recombinant Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) surface vaccine. So it must be replaced by modified vaccines. A chimeric protein comprising both the core and surface portions of the viral envelope was designed on the premise that if the HBV surface protein is fused with the core protein of the viral envelope, it can produce B-cell as well as T-cell immune response. A 23 kDa molecular weight protein, comprising 216 amino acids and consisting of the core and surface regions of the viral envelope protein, was designed. NNPREDICT and PSIPRED programs have provided the secondary structure elements of the protein. The tertiary structure of the protein was predicted by the use of 3D-JIGSAW program. In the predicted tertiary structure, α-helices form a helical bundle domain and the β-strands form another separate domain.

Index Terms—Chimeric protein, hepatitis B virus, homology modeling, therapeutic vaccine.

The authors are with College of Applied Medical Sciences, Northern Border University, Arar-91431, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: nadeem_kizilbash@ yahoo.com, synavia@gmail.com, malkh1195@hotmail.com).

 

Cite:Nadeem A. Kizilbash, Abdul Hai, and Jamal Alruwaili, "Novel Chimeric Protein as Therapeutic Vaccine against Hepatitis B Virus," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 497-500, 2013.