Immunoinformatics-guided designing and in silico analysis of epitope-based polyvalent vaccines against multiple strains of human coronavirus (HCoV).

OBJECTIVES

The group of human coronaviruses (HCoVs) consists of some highly pathogenic viruses that have caused several outbreaks in the past. The newly emerged strain of HCoV, the SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the recent global pandemic that has already caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people due to the lack of effective therapeutic options.

METHODS

In this study, immunoinformatics methods were used to design epitope-based polyvalent vaccines which are expected to be effective against four different pathogenic strains of HCoV i.e., HCoV-OC43, HCoV-SARS, HCoV-MERS, and SARS-CoV-2.

RESULTS

The constructed vaccines consist of highly antigenic, non-allergenic, nontoxic, conserved, and non-homologous T-cell and B-cell epitopes from all the four viral strains. Therefore, they should be able to provide strong protection against all these strains. Protein-protein docking was performed to predict the best vaccine construct. Later, the MD simulation and immune simulation of the best vaccine construct also predicted satisfactory results. Finally, in silico cloning was performed to develop a mass production strategy of the vaccine.

CONCLUSION

If satisfactory results are achieved in further in vivo and in vitro studies, then the vaccines designed in this study might be effective as preventative measures against the selected HCoV strains.