Immunology to Immunotherapeutics of SARS-CoV-2: Identification of Immunogenic Epitopes for Vaccine Development

Abstract

The emergence of COVID19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus has created a global public health and socio-economic crisis. Immunoinformatics-based approaches to investigate the potential antigens is the fastest way to move towards a multiepitope-based vaccine development. This review encompasses the underlying mechanisms of pathogenesis, innate and adaptive immune signaling along with evasion pathways of SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, it compiles the promiscuous peptides from in silico studies which are subjected to prediction of cytokine milieu using web-based servers. Out of the 434 peptides retrieved from all studies, we have identified 33 most promising T cell vaccine candidates. This review presents a list of the most potential epitopes from several proteins of the virus based on their immunogenicity, homology, conservancy and population coverage studies. These epitopes can form a basis of second generation of vaccine development as the first generation vaccines in various stages of trials mostly focus only on Spike protein. We therefore, propose them as most potential candidates which can be taken up immediately for confirmation by experimental studies. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00284-022-03003-3.

Production and Immunogenicity Assessment of LTp50: An Escherichia coli-Made Chimeric Antigen Targeting S1- and S2-Epitopes from the SARS-CoV-2/BA.5 Spike Protein

“…The construction of chimeric proteins carrying such epitopes may result in multi-epitope vaccines able to induce an immune response focused on those targets that result in neutralization, avoiding the presence of immunodominant, non-protective epitopes. The use of a protein as a built-in adjuvant is also an important element that may confer key attributes to a multi-epitope vaccine, providing a higher complexity and thus enhancing immunogenicity while having additional epitopes that could improve the memory and the polarization of the induced immune response [ 29 , 30 ]. The heat-labile enterotoxin B subunit of enterotoxigenic E. coli (LTB) can be used as built-in adjuvant given its high immunogenicity and adjuvant properties [ 31 , 32 ].…”