Viruses (Oct 2022)

Immunoinformatics-Aided Design of a Peptide Based Multiepitope Vaccine Targeting Glycoproteins and Membrane Proteins against Monkeypox Virus

  • Nahid Akhtar,
  • Vikas Kaushik,
  • Ravneet Kaur Grewal,
  • Atif Khurshid Wani,
  • Chonticha Suwattanasophon,
  • Kiattawee Choowongkomon,
  • Romina Oliva,
  • Abdul Rajjak Shaikh,
  • Luigi Cavallo,
  • Mohit Chawla

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/v14112374
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 11
p. 2374

Abstract

Read online

Monkeypox is a self-limiting zoonotic viral disease and causes smallpox-like symptoms. The disease has a case fatality ratio of 3–6% and, recently, a multi-country outbreak of the disease has occurred. The currently available vaccines that have provided immunization against monkeypox are classified as live attenuated vaccinia virus-based vaccines, which pose challenges of safety and efficacy in chronic infections. In this study, we have used an immunoinformatics-aided design of a multi-epitope vaccine (MEV) candidate by targeting monkeypox virus (MPXV) glycoproteins and membrane proteins. From these proteins, seven epitopes (two T-helper cell epitopes, four T-cytotoxic cell epitopes and one linear B cell epitopes) were finally selected and predicted as antigenic, non-allergic, interferon-γ activating and non-toxic. These epitopes were linked to adjuvants to design a non-allergic and antigenic candidate MPXV-MEV. Further, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations predicted stable interactions between predicted MEV and human receptor TLR5. Finally, the immune-simulation analysis showed that the candidate MPXV-MEV could elicit a human immune response. The results obtained from these in silico experiments are promising but require further validation through additional in vivo experiments.

Keywords