Determine the Potential Epitope Based Peptide Vaccine Against Novel SARS-CoV-2 Targeting Structural Proteins Using Immunoinformatics Approaches

Muhammad Waqas; Ali Haider; Muhammad Sufyan; Sami Siraj; Sheikh Arslan Sehgal

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2020.00227

Determine the Potential Epitope Based Peptide Vaccine Against Novel SARS-CoV-2 Targeting Structural Proteins Using Immunoinformatics Approaches

Front Mol Biosci. 2020 Oct 15:7:227. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2020.00227. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Muhammad Waqas¹, Ali Haider¹, Muhammad Sufyan¹, Sami Siraj², Sheikh Arslan Sehgal^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
² Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, Pakistan.
³ Department of Bioinformatics, University of Okara, Okara, Pakistan.

Abstract

Coronaviruses (CoVs) belong to the Coronaviridae-family. The genus Beta-coronaviruses, are enveloped positive strand RNA viruses with club-like spikes at the surface with a unique replication process and a large RNA genome (∼25 kb). CoVs are known as one of the major pathogenic viruses causing a variety of diseases in birds and mammals including humans (lethal respiratory dysfunctions). Recently, a new strain of coronavirus has been identified and named as SARS-CoV-2. A large number of COVID-19 (disease caused by SARS-CoV-2) cases are being diagnosed all over the World especially in China (Wuhan). COVID-19 showed high mortality rate exponentially, however, not even a single effective cure is being introduced yet against COVID-19. In the current study, immunoinformatics approaches were employed to predict the antigenic epitopes against COVID-19 for the development of a coronavirus peptide vaccine. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) and B-cell epitopes were predicted for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus structural proteins (Spikes, Membrane, Envelope, and Nucleocapsid). The docking complexes of the top 10 epitopes having antigenic sites were analyzed led by binding affinity and binding interactional analyses of top ranked predicted peptides with the MHC-I HLA molecule. The predicted peptides may have potential to be used as peptide vaccine against COVID-19.

Keywords: SARS-CoV; SARS-CoV-2; corona virus disease 2019; immunoinformatics; peptide vaccines.