Student Ready Project Formulation, Execution and Presentation (Bts – 421) “exploring Tlr 4 Agonist Peptide as a Vaccine Adjuvant

Abstract

Project Title: “Exploring TLR4 agonist peptide as a vaccine adjuvant.” The development of effective vaccine adjuvants has been heightened with more effort after the COVID-19 pandemic. Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) agonists have shown promise as immunomodulatory agents, making them potential candidates for novel vaccine adjuvants. This thesis describes using in-silico methods to identify and characterize TLR for agonist peptide sequences drawn from various literature. With the data collected, a peptide library was constructed, incorporating these sequences as immunomodulatory agents. Structural Predictions were performed using Pep-fold 4, an important factor in understanding the interaction with TLR4 receptors. Molecular Docking was conducted with the Clus Pro 2.0 Software to explain the potential binding affinities and interactions with the TLR4 receptors. These in-silico analysis forms the basis for peptide selection and rational design. Molecular Dynamic simulation would further insist on the dynamic behavior of peptide receptor complexes and assess the stability over time. Subsequent phases of this research will include cellular cytotoxicity assays, lymphocyte proliferation assays, western blotting, etc. These empirical studies will provide valuable data to evaluate the immunomodulatory properties of the selected peptides for their potential as vaccine adjuvants. Thus, this research bridges computational and experimental approaches in uncovering the promising TLR4 agonist peptides for their role as vaccine adjuvants.