Developing a multi-epitope vaccine candidate to combat porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and porcine deltacoronavirus co-infection by employing an immunoinformatics approach

Wei Hou; Heqiong Wu; Wenting Wang; Ruolan Wang; Wang Han; Sibei Wang; Bin Wang; Haidong Wang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1295678

Developing a multi-epitope vaccine candidate to combat porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and porcine deltacoronavirus co-infection by employing an immunoinformatics approach

Front Microbiol. 2023 Nov 21:14:1295678. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1295678. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Wei Hou¹, Heqiong Wu¹, Wenting Wang¹, Ruolan Wang¹, Wang Han¹, Sibei Wang¹, Bin Wang^{1

2}, Haidong Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Veterinary Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong, China.
² Single Molecule Nanometry Laboratory (Sinmolab), Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

Coinfection of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) and porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is common in pig farms, but there is currently no effective vaccine to prevent this co-infection. In this study, we used immunoinformatics tools to design a multi-epitope vaccine against PEDV and PDCoV co-infection. The epitopes were screened through a filtering pipeline comprised of antigenic, immunogenic, toxic, and allergenic properties. A new multi-epitope vaccine named rPPMEV, comprising cytotoxic T lymphocyte-, helper T lymphocyte-, and B cell epitopes, was constructed. To enhance immunogenicity, the TLR2 agonist Pam2Cys and the TLR4 agonist RS09 were added to rPPMEV. Molecular docking and dynamics simulation were performed to reveal the stable interactions between rPPMEV and TLR2 as well as TLR4. Additionally, the immune stimulation prediction indicated that rPPMEV could stimulate T and B lymphocytes to induce a robust immune response. Finally, to ensure the expression of the vaccine protein, the sequence of rPPMEV was optimized and further performed in silico cloning. These studies suggest that rPPMEV has the potential to be a vaccine candidate against PEDV and PDCoV co-infection as well as a new strategy for interrupting the spread of both viruses.

Keywords: PDCoV; PEDV; immunoinformatics; multi-epitope; vaccine.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province (No. 202103021223168), the Shanxi Province Excellent Doctoral Work Award-Scientific Research Project (No. SXBYKY2022053), the Start-up Fund for Doctoral Research, Shanxi Agricultural University (No. 2021BQ71), Shanxi Provincial Key Research and Development Program (No. 202102140601020), the “Six New” Project of Agriculture and Rural Department of Shanxi Province, the Fund for Shanxi “1331 Project” Key Innovative Research Team (No. 20211331-16), the Fund for Shanxi “1331 Project” (No. 20211331-12).