A prototype tool to formulate the constituents of a synthetic peptide vaccine

• Main Author: Teo, Jacqueline A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Philippine Nuclear Research Institute; Synthetic vaccines; Peptides; Vaccines; Medicine; Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3455; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/10293/viewcontent/CDTG004260_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Molecular biologists at the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) design synthetic peptide vaccines for infectious diseases such as anthrax, simplex herpes, rabies, and papilloma viruses. They obtained the protein sequence of the corresponding viruses from the World Wide Web using a series of computer programs to formulate the constituents of candidate vaccines, and manually analyzing these virtual vaccines for physical stability. This process is tedious, time consuming, and prone to human errors. Hence, this research designed and created a prototype tool that automates this process. In the development of the tool, the processes were carefully studied. Interviews of the molecular biologists of PNRI were conducted. Screen designs were shown to the molecular biologists and were enhanced until they were accepted. Moreover, the tool was created with a database for molecular biologists to easily keep track of the inputs and outputs of the tool. That is, they could view the previous data, as well as export them to Microsoft Excel worksheet. The tools output is 100% accurate. It was verified through comparing the tools output with manual outputs. In addition, the tool is efficient to use for it reduces the average eleven (11) hours manual processing time to an average of three (3) minutes in using the tool. Furthermore, in using the tool, it could formulate the constituents of the synthetic peptide vaccine to approximately 8640 designs per year.