Developing a multiepitope vaccine against dengue virus in Bangladesh using immunoinformatics approach

Abstract

Dengue fever is a devastating mosquito-borne illness that has claimed the lives of countless people. The virus responsible for this disease is a member of the Flaviviridae family, which produces positive-stranded RNA. Dengue fever is an exquisite viral fever caused by the bite of an Aedes mosquito carrying one of four serotypes of dengue virus. This virus is transmitted via a vertical route utilizing a comprehensively unique system. Unfortunately, no effective vaccine has yet been developed to eradicate this disease. This study employed computational methods to design and propose a multi-epitope vaccine against dengue virus in Asia. This study utilized various immunoinformatics databases to predict potent epitopes on the envelope protein of the dengue virus using in silico methods. We identified a total of 14 epitopes from the target envelope protein by assessing their ability to induce both innate and acquired immunity through T- and B-lymphocyte-mediated responses. Because dengue virus is an RNA virus, epitope conservation was considered, and all selected epitopes were 100 percent conserved. The antigenicity of the final component of the multi-epitope vaccine was 0.7055. To improve the stability of the vaccine protein, disulfide engineering was performed in a region with high mobility. Additionally, codon adaptation and in silico cloning ensure that the proposed subunit vaccine will be expressed at a higher level in E. coli. In order to evaluate the binding free energy and stability of the combination, the vaccine protein and TLR-4 receptor were subjected to a molecular docking simulation. In order to establish active immunity against the dengue virus, the proposed in silico vaccine must be tested for safety and immunogenicity. [ J Adv Biotechnol Exp Ther 2023; 6(1.000): 44-57]

Keywords

• dengue
• immunoinformatics
• vaccine
• epitope
• microbiology