Applying high throughput and comprehensive immunoinformatics approaches to design a trivalentsubunit vaccine forinduction of immune response against human emerging coronaviruses SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV2
Abstract Background Coronaviruses (CoV) cause diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Therefore, this study was conducted to contrast a trivalent subunit vaccine against SARS, MERS and COVID-19. The CTL, HTL, MHC I, and IFN-γ epitopes were predicted. Moreover, to stimulate strong helper T lymphocytes (HTLs) responses, Pan HLA DR-binding epitope (PADRE) was used. Also, for boosting immune response, β-defensin 2 was added to the construct as an adjuvant. Furthermore, TAT was applied in the vaccine to facilitate the intracellular delivery. Results Based on the predicted epitopes, a trivalent multi-epitope vaccine with a molecular weight of 74.8 kDa as a strong antigen, a non-allergenic, and soluble protein was constructed. Furtheremore, analyses validated the stability of the proposed vaccine. The binding affinity of the vaccine construct with the TLR3 was confirmed by molecular docking and, stability of the docked complex was simulated. The predicted epitopes demonstrated strong potential to stimulate T and B-cell mediated immune responses. Furthermore, codon optimization and in silico cloning guaranteed increased expression. Conclusions In this work, immunoinformatics investigations demonstrated that this next-generation approach may provide a new horizon for the development of a highly immunogenic vaccine against SARS-CoV, MERS‐CoV, and SARS-CoV-2.