Developing an efficacious vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 infection is critical to stemming COVID-19 fatalities and providing the global community with immune protection. We have used a bioinformatic approach to aid in designing an epitope peptide-based vaccine against the spike protein of the virus. Five antigenic B cell epitopes with viable antigenicity and a total of 27 discontinuous B cell epitopes were mapped out structurally in the spike protein for antibody recognition. We identified eight CD8+ T cell 9-mers and 12 CD4+ T cell 14-15-mer as promising candidate epitopes putatively restricted by a large number of MHC I and II alleles, respectively. We used this information to construct an in silico chimeric peptide vaccine whose translational rate was highly expressed when cloned in pET28a (+) vector. With our In silico test, the vaccine construct was predicted to elicit high antigenicity and cell-mediated immunity when given as a homologous prime-boost, triggering of toll-like receptor 5 by the adjuvant linker. The vaccine was also characterized by an increase in IgM and IgG and an array of Th1 and Th2 cytokines. Upon in silico challenge with SARS-CoV-2, there was a decrease in antigen levels using our immune simulations. We, therefore, propose that potential vaccine designs consider this approach.
【초록키워드】 COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Vaccine, Cytokines, antibody, SARS-COV-2 infection, Vaccine design, Th1, alleles, peptide, in silico, MERS, virus, Toll-like receptor, immune, Spike protein, Antigen, Epitopes, T cell, Community, antigenicity, information, homologous, epitope, Critical, CD8+ T cell, CD4+ T cell, Cell-mediated immunity, immune protection, fatality, B cell epitopes, B cell epitope, chimeric, IgM and IgG, array, antigenic, epitope peptide, MHC I and II alleles, vaccine construct, Th2 cytokines, peptide-based vaccine, triggering, approach, MHC I, decrease, linker, predicted, cloned, eight, characterized, the spike protein, expressed, elicit, Developing, increase in, the vaccine, mapped, translational, 【제목키워드】 Vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein, Immuno-informatics,