development and evaluation of a novel elisa for detection of antibodies against htlv-i using chimeric peptides

We aimed to develope a peptide-based indirect elisa to detect antibodies against human t-lymphotropic virus type i (htlv-i). two chimeric peptides (cp-1 and cp-2) were designed using linear immunodominant epitopes of gp-46-i, and gp21-i proteins, according to the sequence from uniprot database. these peptides were studied initially in the elisa using infected sera. the most promising peptidecp-1, was used to develop a peptide elisa for detection of htlv-i infected sera. the optimal conditions for cp-1elisa were: the optimum coating buffer was 100mm nahco3, ph 9.6; coating peptide concentration was 10 μg/ml; the optimal blocking buffer was5% fetal bovine serum (fbs); the secondary antibody concentration was 1:2000; and serum dilution was 1:20. 20serum samples from htlv-i infected patients were evaluated by elisa developed. cp-1 showed high antigenicity while lacking any cross-reactivity with normal human sera. the results of evaluations indicated that in comparison with commercial elisa, cp-1 elisa showed good sensitivity and specificity. with further validation, cp-1as described in the present study could be introduced as novel reliable and cost-effective candidates for the high-specific screening of htlv-i/-ii infections in endemic regions.