Figure 1
Brief illustration of finding diagnostic epitopes in four steps (DEIFS).
Motivated by the intrinsic limitations of protein biomarkers (a), epitope based diagnoses were proposed and realized by DEIFS (b): 1. Library construction, protein candidates were selected and translated to 30/15 aa overlapped peptide library; 2.Two-round screening, 30/15 aa overlapped peptide library was screened by training group serum and was narrowed by three-mode analysis. Selected peptides were subjected to 15/12 aa overlapped second round screening for epitope pinning; 3. Optimization of epitopes combination. Peptides were further narrowed by SAM and Cluster algorithm and were optimized for diagnosis by the Dsum principle; 4. Validation, chimeric peptides were created from diagnostic ECPs for rapid diagnostic testing. The whole process could be performed in three months and could shift between high content and high density modes according to the need. Figure 2, 3, 4, 5 will give more details of each of the four steps. (c) Performance of the epitope diagnosis based on DEIFS. Sensitivity and specificity at 94.7% and 99.1%, respectively, were achieved.
