Immuno-informatics Design of a Multimeric Epitope Peptide Based Vaccine Targeting SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein

Abstract

Developing 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.

Exploiting reverse vaccinology approach for the design of a multiepitope subunit vaccine against the major SARS-CoV-2 variants

“…The constructed vaccine had high population coverage for countries with high morbidity and infection. Most studies on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine construction had focused only on S in predicting B- and T-cell epitopes Chukwudozie et al, 2021 , Khan et al, 2021 , Kar et al, 2020 . In the present study, we predicted T-cell epitopes from the conserved regions of all 4 structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and from sequences containing the variants in question (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and omicron).…”

The Relevance of Bioinformatics Applications in the Discovery of Vaccine Candidates and Potential Drugs for COVID-19 Treatment

“…Other quality checks such as their respective antigenicity, allergenicity, peptide toxicity, and peptide conservancy, which characterize their immunogenicity profile, are considered. A well-summarized and applied process of these steps can be seen in a study conducted by Chukwudozie et al 6,34 The New SARS-CoV-2 Viral Strain and Impact on Vaccine Development…”

“…This is achieved via molecular docking, dynamics simulations, and homology modeling to deduce antigen and antibody structure. Structural vaccinology techniques have been applied in predicting vaccine candidates for the SARS-COV-2 34 , 35 and these have aided the identification of structurally stable, safe, and effective peptides as vaccine candidates.…”

“…Chukwudozie et al 6 , 34 have extensively provided a comprehensive and simplified step in designing peptide vaccines and also provided various approaches in validating them using in silico checkpoints. The steps involved in designing an epitopic peptide vaccine adopting immuno-informatics method include proteomic data retrieval of the protein of interest and adoption of computational immunology analysis of the data, which includes test for antigenicity, allergenicity, peptide toxicity, and epitopic conservancy.…”

Immunoinformatics and reverse vaccinomic approaches for effective design

“…Their immunological simulations showed a reduction in antigen levels after an in silico challenge with SARS-CoV-2. As a result, they’ve recommended this possible vaccination design as a significant strategy ( Chukwudozie et al, 2020 ).…”