Development of a Multiepitope Vaccine Against Sars-Cov-2: Immunoinformatics Study Publisher



Ghafouri F¹ ; Ahangari Cohan R² ; Samimi H³ ; Hosseini Rad ASM⁴ ; Naderi M⁵ ; Noorbakhsh F⁶ ; Haghpanah V^{3, 7}
Source: JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology Published:2022

Abstract

Background: Since the first appearance of SARS-CoV-2 in China in December 2019, the world witnessed the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Due to the high transmissibility rate of the virus, there is an urgent need to design and develop vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 to prevent more cases affected by the virus. Objective: A computational approach is proposed for vaccine design against the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein, as the key target for neutralizing antibodies, and envelope (E) protein, which contains a conserved sequence feature. Methods: We used previously reported epitopes of S protein detected experimentally and further identified a collection of predicted B-cell and major histocompatibility (MHC) class II–restricted T-cell epitopes derived from E proteins with an identical match to SARS-CoV-2 E protein. Results: The in silico design of our candidate vaccine against the S and E proteins of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrated a high affinity to MHC class II molecules and effective results in immune response simulations. Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, the multiepitope vaccine designed against the S and E proteins of SARS-CoV-2 may be considered as a new, safe, and efficient approach to combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. © Fatemeh Ghafouri, Reza Ahangari Cohan, Hilda Samimi, Ali Hosseini Rad S M, Mahmood Naderi, Farshid Noorbakhsh, Vahid.