Designing of a multi-epitope vaccine candidate against Nipah virus by in silico approach: a putative prophylactic solution for the deadly virus

Abstract

Nipah virus (NPV) is one of the most notorious viruses with a very high fatality rate. Because of the recurrent advent of this virus and its severe neurological implications, often leading to high mortality, the WHO R&D Blueprint, 2018 has listed the Nipah virus as one of the emerging infectious diseases requiring urgent research and development effort. Yet there is a major layback in the development of effective vaccines or drugs against NPV. In this study, we have designed a stable multivalent vaccine combining several T-cell and B-cell epitopes of the essential Nipah viral proteins with the help of different ligands and adjuvants which can effectively induce both humoral and cellular immune responses in human. Different advanced immune-informatic tools confirm the stability, high immunogenicity and least allergenicity of the vaccine candidate. The standard molecular dynamic cascade analysis validates the stable interaction of the vaccine construct with the human Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) complex. Later, codon optimization and in silico cloning in a known pET28a vector system shows the possibility for the expression of this vaccine in a simple organism like E.coli. It is believed that with further in vitro and in vivo validation, this vaccine construct can pose to be a better prophylactic solution to the Nipah viral disease.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Vaccine
• multi-epitopes
• Nipah virus
• Toll-like Receptor 3
• immuno-informatics

Acknowledgements

PM acknowledges the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), New Delhi and NJ to the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi for their respective fellowships. We acknowledge Indian Institute of Technology, Indore for computational facilities.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Authors contribution

AK conceptualized the idea and did the critical analysis of the manuscript. PM and NJ together carried on the immune-informatics analysis and drafted the manuscript.