Background: The newly identified coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV has posed a serious global health threat. According to the latest report (18-February-2020), it has infected more than 72,000 people globally and led to deaths of more than 1,016 people in China. Methods: The 2019 novel coronavirus proteome was aligned to a curated database of viral immunogenic peptides. The immunogenicity of detected peptides and their binding potential to HLA alleles was predicted by immunogenicity predictive models and NetMHCpan 4.0. Results: We report in silico identification of a comprehensive list of immunogenic peptides that can be used as potential targets for 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) vaccine development. First, we found 28 nCoV peptides identical to Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS CoV) that have previously been characterized immunogenic by T cell assays. Second, we identified 48 nCoV peptides having a high degree of similarity with immunogenic peptides deposited in The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). Lastly, we conducted a de novo search of 2019-nCoV 9-mer peptides that i) bind to common HLA alleles in Chinese and European population and ii) have T Cell Receptor (TCR) recognition potential by positional weight matrices and a recently developed immunogenicity algorithm, iPred, and identified in total 63 peptides with a high immunogenicity potential. Conclusions: Given the limited time and resources to develop vaccine and treatments for 2019-nCoV, our work provides a shortlist of candidates for experimental validation and thus can accelerate development pipeline.
【저자키워드】 Adaptive immunity, Vaccine development, coronavirus, immunogenicity, T cell cross-reactivity, 【초록키워드】 Treatment, Vaccine, 2019-nCoV, peptide, in silico, database, China, 2019 novel coronavirus, Health, Predictive model, Algorithm, peptides, death, target, proteome, resource, TCR, binding, similarity, SARS CoV, experimental validation, European population, IEDB, NetMHCpan, Chinese, candidate, immunogenic, nCoV, HLA allele, second, de novo, T cell assays, Immune Epitope Database, predicted, develop, conducted, characterized, can be used, provide, accelerate, aligned, curated, immunogenic peptide, 【제목키워드】 Vaccine, 2019-nCoV, target,