Design of a novel multiple epitope-based vaccine: an immunoinformatics approach to combat monkeypox

Abstract

Monkeypox virus is an infectious agent that causes fever, Pneumonitis encephalitis, rash, lymphadenopathy and bacterial infection. The current outbreak of monkeypox has reawakened the global health concern. In the current situation of increasing viral infection, no vaccine or drug is available for monkeypox. Thus, there is an urgent need for viable vaccine development to prevent viral transmission by boosting human immunity. Herein, using immunoinformatics approaches, a multi-epitope vaccine was constructed for the Monkeypox virus. In this connection, B-Cell and T-cell epitopes were identified and joined with the help of adjutants and linkers. The vaccine construct was selected based on promising vaccine candidates and immunogenic potential. Further epitopes were selected based on antigenicity score, non-allergenicity and good immunological properties. Molecular docking reveals strong interactions between TLR-9 and the predicted vaccine construct. Finally, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to evaluate the stability and compactness of the constructed vaccine. The MD simulation results demonstrated the significant stability of the polypeptide vaccine construct. The predicted vaccine represented good stability, expression, immunostimulatory capabilities and significant solubility. Design vaccine was verified as efficient in different computer-based immune response investigations. Additionally, the constructed vaccine also represents a good population coverage in computer base analysis.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Monkeypox
• epitope
• vaccine
• B-cell
• T-cell
• immunoinformatics

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Author’s contributions

C.H. & M.S.: Contribute Equally, Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualization, Data Curation. C.L. & X.D.: Investigation, S.A.K.: Writing - review & editing, Data Curation. H.K.: Methodology write-up. G.Z. & Z.U.-H.: Supervision, Project administration, Writing - review & editing, Software, Funding acquisition.

Data availability statement

NCBI database in FASTA format with ID (AAQ09810.1).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China No. 2021YFC2102900 and Beijing Natural Science Foundation No. L212001.