Chimeric vaccine design against the epidemic Langya Henipavirus using immunoinformatics and validation via immune simulation approaches

Aamir Fahira; Rana Sherdil Amin; Uzma Arshad; Muhammad Idrees Khan; Ali Alamdar Shah Syed; Abdulrahman Alshammari; Qiangzhen Yang; Zhuo Wang; Liaqat Ali; Yongyong Shi

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17376

Chimeric vaccine design against the epidemic Langya Henipavirus using immunoinformatics and validation via immune simulation approaches

Heliyon. 2023 Jun 15;9(6):e17376. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17376. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Aamir Fahira^{1

2}, Rana Sherdil Amin³, Uzma Arshad⁴, Muhammad Idrees Khan⁵, Ali Alamdar Shah Syed¹, Abdulrahman Alshammari⁶, Qiangzhen Yang¹, Zhuo Wang^{1

2}, Liaqat Ali⁷, Yongyong Shi^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Bio-X Institutes, Key Laboratory for the Genetics of Developmental and Neuropsychiatric Disorders (Ministry of Education), Collaborative Innovation Centre for Brain Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
² The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, The Biomedical Sciences Institute of Qingdao University (Qingdao Branch of SJTU Bio-X Institutes), Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China.
³ Sharif Medical and Dental College, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.
⁴ Gujranwala Medical College, Gujranwala, Punjab, Pakistan.
⁵ School of Sensing Science and Engineering, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁶ Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Fisch College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX, USA.

Abstract

In July 2022, a new virus called Langya virus (LayV) was discovered in China in patients who had a fever. This virus is a type of Henipavirus (HNV) and is considered a potential threat as it could spread from animals to humans. It causes respiratory disease with symptoms including fever, coughing, and fatigue and is closely linked to two other henipaviruses that are known to infect humans, namely Hendra and Nipah viruses. These viruses may cause fatal respiratory illnesses. Investigators believe that the LayV is spread by shrews, and may have infected humans directly or via an intermediary species. Thus, the use of vaccines or immunizations against LayV is an alternate strategy for disease prevention. In this study, we employed various immunoinformatics methods to predict B cell, HTL and T cell epitopes from the LayV proteome in order to find the most promising candidate for a LayV vaccine. The most potent epitopes that are immunogenic and non-allergenic were joined with each other through suitable linkers. Human β-defensin 2 was employed as an adjuvant to increase the immunogenicity of the vaccine construct. The final sequence of a multi-epitope vaccine construct was modelled for docking with TLRs. Concisely, our results suggest that the docked complexes of vaccine-TLRs seemed to be stable. Additionally, in silico cloning was done using E. coli as the host in order to validate the expression of our designed vaccine construct. The GC content of 54.39% and CAI value of 0.94 revealed that the vaccine component expresses efficiently in the host. This study presents the novel vaccine construct for LayV which will be essential for further experimental validations to confirm the immunogenicity and safety of the proposed vaccine structure, and eventually to treat HNV-related diseases.

Keywords: Immune simulation; Immunoinformatics; Langya henipavirus; Molecular modeling; Protein-protein docking; Vaccine construction.