Immunoinformatic design of a COVID-19 subunit vaccine using entire structural immunogenic epitopes of SARS-CoV-2.
Sci Rep
; 10(1): 20864, 2020 11 30.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-951878
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute pneumonic disease, with no prophylactic or specific therapeutical solution. Effective and rapid countermeasure against the spread of the disease's associated virus, SARS-CoV-2, requires to incorporate the computational approach. In this study, we employed various immunoinformatics tools to design a multi-epitope vaccine polypeptide with the highest potential for activating the human immune system against SARS-CoV-2. The initial epitope set was extracted from the whole set of viral structural proteins. Potential non-toxic and non-allergenic T-cell and B-cell binding and cytokine inducing epitopes were then identified through a priori prediction. Selected epitopes were bound to each other with appropriate linkers, followed by appending a suitable adjuvant to increase the immunogenicity of the vaccine polypeptide. Molecular modelling of the 3D structure of the vaccine construct, docking, molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations confirmed that the vaccine peptide had high affinity for Toll-like receptor 3 binding, and that the vaccine-receptor complex was highly stable. As our vaccine polypeptide design captures the advantages of structural epitopes and simultaneously integrates precautions to avoid relevant side effects, it is suggested to be promising for elicitation of an effective and safe immune response against SARS-CoV-2 in vivo.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Viral Structural Proteins
/
Vaccines, Subunit
/
COVID-19 Vaccines
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Prognostic study
Topics:
Vaccines
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Sci Rep
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S41598-020-77547-4
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