Volume 7, Number 4—August 2001
THEME ISSUE
West Nile Virus
West Nile Virus
Rapid Determination of HLA B*07 Ligands from the West Nile Virus NY99 Genome
, Caitlin Saint-Aubin*, Andrew Bosma*, Hakima Sbai*, James Rayner†, and William Martin†
Table 4
Projected cost of HLA-B7 epitope mapping for the West Nile virus genome
| EpiMatrix | Overlapping (OL)a (10 AA long OL by 5 AA) | Complete OL set (decamers overlapping by 9) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peptides | 20 | 685 | 3,424 |
| Peptide synthesis | $5,000 | $171,250 | $856,000 |
| Time (days) | 28 | 959 | 4,794 |
| Technician/reagent cost | $2,608 | $89,332 | $446,527 |
| cost (synthesis + assay) 12 ligandsb | $634 | $21,715 | $108,544 |
| cost (synthesis + assay) 72 ligandsc | $617 | $3,619 | $18,091 |
aThe standard overlapping approach, constructing a set of 10 amino-acid long peptides overlapping by 5 amino acids (10/5 OL set) would require the synthesis of 685 decamer peptides, approximately 30 times the number synthesized and tested by the EpiMatrix approach. The "discovery" cost per ligand was calculated by dividing the total cost of synthesis and screening for each of the approaches by the number of ligands expected to be discovered (12 ligands, a low estimate, and 72 ligands, a high estimate).
bBased on the assumption that only 12 ligands will be found
cBased on the assumption that as many as 72 ligands may be found. In that case, 95 peptides would be synthesized for EpiMatrix, 685 for OL (10 by 5), and 3,434 for the exhaustive approach.