PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Immuno-informatics design of a multimeric epitope peptide based vaccine targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein.

  • Onyeka S Chukwudozie,
  • Clive M Gray,
  • Tawakalt A Fagbayi,
  • Rebecca C Chukwuanukwu,
  • Victor O Oyebanji,
  • Taiwo T Bankole,
  • Richard A Adewole,
  • Eze M Daniel

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248061
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 3
p. e0248061

Abstract

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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.