Prediction of putative epitope-based vaccine against all corona virus strains for the Chinese population: Approach toward development of vaccine.

Currently, the whole world is facing the coronavirus disease-19 pandemic. As of now, approximately 0.15 million people around the globe are infected with the novel coronavirus. In the last decade, two strains of the coronavirus family, severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, also resulted in epidemics in south Asian and the Middle Eastern countries with high mortality rate. This scenario demands the development of a putative vaccine which may provide immunity against all current and new evolving coronavirus strains. In this study, we designed an epitope-based vaccine using an immunoinformatic approach. This vaccine may protect against all coronavirus strains. The vaccine is developed by considering the geographical distribution of coronavirus strains and host genetics (Chinese population). Nine experimentally validated epitopes sequences from coronavirus strains were used to derive the variants considering the conservancy in all strains. Further, the binding affinities of all derived variants were checked with most abundant human leukocyte antigen alleles in the Chinese population. Three major histocompatibility complex (MHC) Class I epitopes from spike glycoprotein and nucleoprotein showed sufficient binding while one MHC Class II epitope from spike glycoprotein was found to be an effective binder. A cocktail of these epitopes gave more than 95% population coverage in the Chinese population. Moreover, molecular dynamics simulation supported the aforementioned predictions. Further, in vivo studies are needed to confirm the immunogenic potential of these vaccines.

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