An Integrated In-Silico Approach to Develop Epitope-Based Peptide Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2

Coronaviruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prekshi Garg ◽  
Neha Srivastava ◽  
Prachi Srivastava

Background: SARS-CoV-2 has been the talk of the town ever since the beginning of 2020. Every country is trying all possible steps to combat the disease ranging from shutting the complete economy of the country to the repurposing of drugs and vaccine development. The rapid data analysis and widespread tools have made bioinformatics capable of giving new insights to deal with the current scenario more efficiently through an emerging field, Vaccinomics. Objective: The present in-silico study was attempted to identify peptide fragments from spike surface glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 that can be efficiently used for the development of an epitope-based vaccine designing approach. Methodology: The epitopes of B and T-cell are predicted using integrated computational tools. VaxiJen server, NetCTL, and IEDB tools were used to study, analyze, and predict potent T-cell epitopes, its subsequent MHC-I interactions, and B-cell epitopes. The 3D structure prediction of peptides and MHC-I alleles (HLA-C*03:03) was further done using AutoDock4.0. Result: Based on result interpretation, the peptide sequence from 1138-1145 amino acid and sequence WTAGAAAYY and YDPLQPEL were obtained as potential B-cell and T-cell epitopes respectively. Conclusion: The peptide sequence WTAGAAAYY and the amino acid sequence from 1138-1145 of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 can be used as a probable B-cell epitope candidate. Also, the amino acid sequence YDPLQPEL can be used as a potent T-cell epitope. This in-silico study will help us to identify novel epitope-based peptide vaccine targets in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Further, the in-vitro and in-vivo study needed to validate the findings.

Author(s):  
Prekshi Garg ◽  
Neha Srivastava ◽  
Prachi Srivastava

SARS-CoV-2 has been the talk of the town ever since the beginning of 2020. The pandemic has brought the complete world on a halt. Every country is trying all possible steps to combat the disease ranging from shutting the complete economy of the country to repurposing of drugs and vaccine development. The rapid data analysis and widespread tools, software and databases have made bioinformatics capable of giving new insights to the researchers to deal with the current scenario more efficiently. Vaccinomics, the new emerging field of bioinformatics uses concepts of immunogenetics and immunogenomics with in silico tools to give promising results for wet lab experiments. This approach is highly validated for the designing and development of potent vaccines. The present in-silico study was attempted to identify peptide fragments from spike surface glycoprotein that can be efficiently used for the designing and development of epitope-based vaccine designing approach. Both B-cell and T-cell epitopes are predicted using integrated computational tools. VaxiJen server was used for prediction of protective antigenicity of the protein. NetCTL was studied for analyzing most potent T cell epitopes and its subsequent MHC-I interaction through tools provided by IEDB. 3D structure prediction of peptides and MHC-I alleles (HLA-C*03:03) was further done to carry out docking studies using AutoDock4.0. Various tools from IEDB were used to predict B-cell epitopes on the basis of different essential parameters like surface accessibility, beta turns and many more. Based on results interpretation, the peptide sequence from 1138-1145 amino acid and sequence WTAGAAAYY and YDPLQPEL were obtained as a potential B-cell epitope and T-cell epitope respectively. This in-silico study will help us to identify novel epitope-based peptide vaccine target in spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Further, in-vitro and in-vivo study needed to validate the findings.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. BBI.S13402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anayet Hasan ◽  
Mehjabeen Hossain ◽  
Jibran Alam

Saint Louis encephalitis virus, a member of the flaviviridae subgroup, is a culex mosquito-borne pathogen. Despite severe epidemic outbreaks on several occasions, not much progress has been made with regard to an epitope-based vaccine designed for Saint Louis encephalitis virus. The envelope proteins were collected from a protein database and analyzed with an in silico tool to identify the most immunogenic protein. The protein was then verified through several parameters to predict the T-cell and B-cell epitopes. Both T-cell and B-cell immunity were assessed to determine that the protein can induce humoral as well as cell-mediated immunity. The peptide sequence from 330–336 amino acids and the sequence REYCYEATL from the position 57 were found as the most potential B-cell and T-cell epitopes, respectively. Furthermore, as an RNA virus, one important thing was to establish the epitope as a conserved one; this was also done by in silico tools, showing 63.51% conservancy. The epitope was further tested for binding against the HLA molecule by computational docking techniques to verify the binding cleft epitope interaction. However, this is a preliminary study of designing an epitope-based peptide vaccine against Saint Louis encephalitis virus; the results awaits validation by in vitro and in vivo experiments.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onyeka S. Chukwudozie ◽  
Clive M. Gray ◽  
Tawakalt A. Fagbayi ◽  
Rebecca C. Chukwuanukwu ◽  
Victor O. Oyebanji ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTDeveloping an efficacious vaccine to SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical to stem COVID-19 fatalities and providing the global community with immune protection. We have used a bioinformatic approach to aid in the design of an epitope peptide-based vaccine against the spike protein of the virus. Five antigenic B cell epitopes with viable antigenicity and a total of 27 discontinuous B cell epitopes were mapped out structurally in the spike protein for antibody recognition. We identified eight CD8+ T cell 9-mers along with 12 CD4+ T cell 14-15-mer as promising candidate epitopes putatively restricted by a large number of MHC-I and II alleles respectively. We used this information to construct an in silico chimeric peptide vaccine whose translational rate was highly expressed when cloned in pET28a (+) vector. The vaccine construct was predicted to elicit high antigenicity and cell-mediated immunity when given as a homologous prime-boost, with triggering of toll-like receptor 5 by the adjuvant linker. The vaccine was characterized by an increase in IgM and IgG and an array of Th1 and Th2 cytokines. Upon in silico challenge with SARS-CoV-2, there was a decrease in antigen levels using our immune simulations. We therefore propose that potential vaccine designs consider this approach.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamika Basu ◽  
Anasua Sarkar ◽  
Ujjwal Maulik

ABSTRACTThe cutting-edge technology vaccinomics is the combination of two topics immunogenetics and immunogenomics with the knowledge of systems biology and immune profiling for designing vaccine against infectious disease. In our present study, an epitope-based peptide vaccine against nonstructural protein 4 of beta coronavirus, using a combination of B cell and T cell epitope predictions, followed by molecular docking methods are performed. Here, protein sequences of homologous nonstructural protein 4 of beta coronavirus are collected and conserved regions present in them are investigated via phylogenetic study to determine the most immunogenic part of protein. From the identified region of the target protein, the peptide sequence IRNTTNPSAR from the region ranging from 38-47 and the sequence PTDTYTSVYLGKFRG from the positions of 76-90 are considered as the most potential B cell and T cell epitopes respectively. Furthermore, this predicted T cell epitopes PTDTYTSVY and PTDTYTSVYLGKFRG interacted with MHC allelic proteins HLA-A*01:01 and HLA-DRB5*01:01 respectively with the low IC50 values. These epitopes are perfectly fitted into the epitope binding grooves of alpha helix of MHC I molecule and MHC II molecule with binding energy scores −725.0 Kcal/mole and −786.0 Kcal/mole respectively, showing stability in MHC molecules binding. This MHC restricted epitope PTDTYTSVY also showed a good conservancy of 50.16% in world population coverage. This MHC I HLA-A*01:01 allele is present among 58.87% of Chinese population also. Therefore, the epitopes IRNTTNPSAR and PTDTYTSVYLGKFRG may be considered as potential peptides for peptide-based vaccine for coronavirus after further experimental study.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Onyeka S. Chukwudozie ◽  
Rebecca C. Chukwuanukwu ◽  
Onyekachi O. Iroanya ◽  
Daniel M. Eze ◽  
Vincent C. Duru ◽  
...  

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has previously never been identified with humans, thereby creating devastation in public health. The need for an effective vaccine to curb this pandemic cannot be overemphasized. In view of this, we designed a subcomponent antigenic peptide vaccine targeting the N-terminal (NT) and C-terminal (CT) RNA binding domains of the nucleocapsid protein that aid in viral replication. Promising antigenic B cell and T cell epitopes were predicted using computational pipelines. The peptides “RIRGGDGKMKDL” and “AFGRRGPEQTQGNFG” were the B cell linear epitopes with good antigenic index and nonallergenic property. Two CD8+ and Three CD4+ T cell epitopes were also selected considering their safe immunogenic profiling such as allergenicity, antigen level conservancy, antigenicity, peptide toxicity, and putative restrictions to a number of MHC-I and MHC-II alleles. With these selected epitopes, a nonallergenic chimeric peptide vaccine incapable of inducing a type II hypersensitivity reaction was constructed. The molecular interaction between the Toll-like receptor-5 (TLR5) which was triggered by the vaccine was analyzed by molecular docking and scrutinized using dynamics simulation. Finally, in silico cloning was performed to ensure the expression and translation efficiency of the vaccine, utilizing the pET-28a vector. This research, therefore, provides a guide for experimental investigation and validation.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0248061
Author(s):  
Onyeka S. Chukwudozie ◽  
Clive M. Gray ◽  
Tawakalt A. Fagbayi ◽  
Rebecca C. Chukwuanukwu ◽  
Victor O. Oyebanji ◽  
...  

Developing an efficacious vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical to stemming COVID-19 fatalities and providing the global community with immune protection. We have used a bioinformatic approach to aid in designing an epitope peptide-based vaccine against the spike protein of the virus. Five antigenic B cell epitopes with viable antigenicity and a total of 27 discontinuous B cell epitopes were mapped out structurally in the spike protein for antibody recognition. We identified eight CD8+ T cell 9-mers and 12 CD4+ T cell 14-15-mer as promising candidate epitopes putatively restricted by a large number of MHC I and II alleles, respectively. We used this information to construct an in silico chimeric peptide vaccine whose translational rate was highly expressed when cloned in pET28a (+) vector. With our In silico test, the vaccine construct was predicted to elicit high antigenicity and cell-mediated immunity when given as a homologous prime-boost, triggering of toll-like receptor 5 by the adjuvant linker. The vaccine was also characterized by an increase in IgM and IgG and an array of Th1 and Th2 cytokines. Upon in silico challenge with SARS-CoV-2, there was a decrease in antigen levels using our immune simulations. We, therefore, propose that potential vaccine designs consider this approach.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rayan A Abdalrahman ◽  
Shima S Ahmed ◽  
Mahmoud A Elnaeem ◽  
Marwa S Mohammed ◽  
Nawraz M Jammie ◽  
...  

AbstractSchistosoma japonicum is the most pathogenic causative form of schistosomiasis that causes a major health problem in its endemic countries. Until now, praziquantel is the only drug used to treat Schistosomiasis, but it does not prevent re-infection. So, repetition of the treatment is needed. Moreover, there is no effective vaccine against S. japonicum. Therefore, an urgent need for the development of vaccines is mandatory. This study aimed to analyze an immunogenic protein, Transitionally Controlled Tumor Protein (TCTP) using an immunoinformatics approach to design a universal peptide vaccine against Schistosoma japonicum. A set of 22 of TCTP sequences were retrieved from NCBI database. Conservancy of these sequences was tested and then conserved B cell and T cell epitopes were predicted using different tools available in IEBD. Epitopes having high scores in both B and T cell predicting tools were proposed. An epitope129YEHYI133was predicted as a most promising epitope with good prediction scores in surface accessibility and antigenicity. Besides that, epitopes129YEHYIGESM137and92YLKAIKERL100were predicted as the most promising epitopes concerning their binding to MHC I and MHC II allele respectively. The study revealed that our predicted epitopes could be used to develop an efficacious vaccine against Schistosoma japonicum in the future especially epitope YEHYIGESM as it is shared between MHC I and II alleles and overlapped with the most promising B cell epitope. Both in vitro and in vivo studies is recommended to confirm the efficacy of YEHYIGESM as a peptide vaccine.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onyeka S. Chukwudozie ◽  
Rebecca C. Chukwuanukwu ◽  
Iroanya O. Onyekachi ◽  
Eze M. Daniel ◽  
Duru C. Vincent ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has previously never been identified with humans, thereby creating devastation in public health. The need for an effective vaccine to curb this pandemic cannot be overemphasized. In view of this, we, therefore, designed a subcomponent antigenic peptide vaccine targeting the N-terminal (NT) and C-terminal (CT) RNA binding domains of nucleocapsid protein that aid in viral replication. Promising antigenic B-cells and T cell epitopes were predicted using computational pipelines. The peptides “RIRGGDGKMKDL” and “AFGRRGPEQTQGNFG” were the B cell linear epitopes with good antigenic index and non-allergenic property. Two CD8+ and Three CD4+ T-cell epitopes were also selected considering their safe immunogenic profiling such as allergenicity, antigen level conservancy, antigenicity, peptide toxicity, and putative restrictions to a number of MHC-I and II alleles. With these selected epitopes, a non-allergenic chimeric peptide vaccine incapable of inducing a Type II hypersensitivity reaction was constructed. The molecular interaction between the toll-like receptor-5 (TLR5) which was triggered by the vaccine was analyzed by molecular docking and scrutinized using dynamics simulation. Finally, in silico cloning was performed to ensure the expression and translation efficiency of the vaccine, utilizing pET-28a vector. This research, therefore, provides a guide for experimental investigation and validation.


Author(s):  
Arpita Singha Roy ◽  
Mahafujul Islam Quadery Tonmoy ◽  
Atqiya Fariha ◽  
Ithmam Hami ◽  
Ibrahim Khalil Afif ◽  
...  

AbstractSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the novel coronavirus responsible for the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). No sustainable treatment option is available so far to tackle such a public health threat. Therefore, designing a suitable vaccine to overcome this hurdle asks for immediate attention. In this study, we targeted for a design of multi-epitope based vaccine using immunoinformatics tools. We considered the structural proteins S, E and, M of SARS-CoV-2, since they facilitate the infection of the virus into host cell and using different bioinformatics tools and servers, we predicted multiple B-cell and T-cell epitopes having potential for the required vaccine design. Phylogenetic analysis provided insight on ancestral molecular changes and molecular evolutionary relationship of S, E, and M proteins. Based on the antigenicity and surface accessibility of these proteins, eight epitopes were selected by various B cell and T cell epitope prediction tools. Molecular docking was executed to interpret the binding interactions of these epitopes and three potential epitopes WTAGAAAYY, YVYSRVKNL, and GTITVEELK were selected for their noticeable higher binding affinity scores −9.1, −7.4, and −7.0 kcal/mol, respectively. Targeted epitopes had 91.09% population coverage worldwide. In summary, we identified three epitopes having the most significant properties of designing the peptide-based vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document