Designing spike protein (S-Protein) based multi-epitope peptide vaccine against SARS COVID-19 by immunoinformatics

• Main Authors: Hitesh Singh, Renu Jakhar, Neelam Sehrawat
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-11-01
• Series: Heliyon
• Subjects: Bioinformatics; Immune response; Vaccination; Viral disease; Proteins; Peptides
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020323719

The outbreak of COVID-19 was originated from China, responsible for Several Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Scientists are forced to develop vaccine and effective drugs to control COVID-19 infection. To develop effective vaccine for SARS – COVID 19, immunoinformatics and computational approaches could helps to design successful vaccine against this biggest danger for humanity. Here we used various in – silico approaches to designed vaccine against COVID-19. To develop vaccine, we target S- protein, expressed on the virus surface plays important role in COVID-19 infection. We identified 12 B-cell, 9 T-helper and 20 Cytotoxic T-cell epitope based on criteria of selection. The predicted epitopes were link simultaneously with GPGPG & AAY linkers. The β-defensin was used as adjuvant, linked with selected epitope by using EAAAK linker. For vaccine construct justification we analysed its immunogenicity, allergenicity and physiochemical properties. Our study revealed that vaccine was non toxic, immunogenic and antigenic in nature and covers 98.6% of world population, important for vaccine effectively. In- silico cloning was used to analyse its expression in vector. Molecular docking was performed to study the interaction of construct with TLR (TLR3, TLR4, and TLR9) molecules. The immune simulation was conducted and conformed that our vaccine constructs can induces both acquired and humoral immunity effectively against COVID-19 at very low concentration, but along with bioinformatics study we need to conduct experiment in laboratory to validate its safety and effectiveness.