Immunoinformatics Tools: A boon in vaccine Development Against Covid-19

ABSTRACT

The first evidences of SARS Covid 19 virus were reported from Labs in Wuhan, China's Hubei Province, at the end of 2019. It spread very quickly throughout China, leading in an epidemic and a global pandemic. A large population was affected and died due to the pandemic in 2019. It shares genetic similarities with SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-COV. The development of an effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is important for reducing COVID-19 deaths and giving immunological protection to the worldwide community. The lengthy and expensive process of vaccine production can be shortened by using immunoinformatics approaches. immunoinformatics tools such as Vaxijen, IEDB, NetCTL 1.2, PEP-FOLD etc have previously been used in reverse vaccinology for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development in areas such as antigen selection, toxicity, predicting vaccine targets, allergenicity prediction and selection of MHC-I and II binding epitopes etc. In this review, we summarize some of the most useful immunoinformatics tools like vexijen, Bepipred 2.0, SVMTrip, FNepitope etc and their role in the development of covid 19 vaccines. The characteristics of such tools have been thoroughly reviewed, and which may provide experimental biologists with prediction insights that may enhance active research attempts to identify therapies for the infectious COVID-19 illness. © 2022 IEEE.