Expert Rev Vaccines . Designing an Efficient Multi-Epitope Vaccine Displaying Interactions with Diverse HLA Molecules for an Efficient Humoral and Cellular Immune Response to prevent COVID-19 infection

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Expert Rev Vaccines


. 2020 Sep 1.
doi: 10.1080/14760584.2020.1811091. Online ahead of print.
Designing an Efficient Multi-Epitope Vaccine Displaying Interactions with Diverse HLA Molecules for an Efficient Humoral and Cellular Immune Response to prevent COVID-19 infection


Mrutyunjay Suar ¹ , Soumya Mahapatra ¹ , Susrita Sahoo ¹ , Budheswar Dehury ¹ , Vishakha Raina ¹ , Shubhransu Patro ¹ , Namrata Misra ¹



Affiliations

• PMID: 32869699
• DOI: 10.1080/14760584.2020.1811091

Abstract

Background: The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the causative agent of the ongoing pandemic COVID-19 disease continues to infect people globally and has infected millions of humans worldwide. However, no effective vaccine against this virus exists.
Method: Using Immunoinformatics, epitopic sequences from multiple glycoproteins that play crucial role in pathogenesis were identified. Particularly, epitopes were mapped from conserved receptor-binding domain of spike protein which have been experimentally validated in SARS-CoV-1 as a promising target for vaccine development.
Results: A multi-epitopic vaccine construct comprising of B-cell, CTL, HTL epitopes was developed alongwith fusion of adjuvant and linkers. The epitopes identified herein are reported for the first time and were predicted to be highly antigenic, stable, non-allergen, nontoxic and displayed conservation across several SARS-CoV-2 isolates from different countries. Additionally, the epitopes associated with maximum HLA alleles and population coverage analysis shows the proposed epitopes would be a relevant representative of large proportion of the world population. A reliable three-dimensional structure of the vaccine construct was developed. Consequently, docking and molecular-dynamics simulation ensured the stable interaction between vaccine and innate-immune receptor.
Conclusion: The promiscuous epitopes capable of inducing humoral and cellular immune response can be considered as potential vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: COVID-19; Immunoinformatics; SARS-CoV-2; multi-epitopic vaccine; receptor-binding domain.