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 along with fusion of adjuvant and linkers. The epitopes identified herein are reported for the first time and were predicted to be highly antigenic, stable, nonallergen, 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.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the School of Biotechnology, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar 751024, India for providing necessary infrastructure to carry out this work.
Author contributions
Conception and design: MS, NM; Computational work: SM, SS; Data Analysis and Curation: NM, BD, VR; Original Draft Preparation: NM; Writing- Reviewing and Editing; MS, VR, BD, SP. The manuscript has been read and approved by all authors.
Declaration of interest
The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.
Reviewer disclosures
Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose
Supporting information
The additional information of the present computational work and details of the analysis are included in supporting information.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.