The Proteomic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 to design B and T cells Multi-epitopes Subunit Vaccine

Abstract

In December 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause surfaced in Wuhan, China's Hubei province, with an epidemiologic link to the Huanan Seafood Market. It was discovered that a newly Identified coronavirus, later named as SARS CoV-2 is responsible for the disease. As of 21 July 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed a total of 14,881,534 infections and 613,994 deaths.
Many vaccine candidates are under development and clinical trials for corona virus disease. In this study, immunoinformatics strategies were applied to four specific proteins of the newly sequenced strain of the virus. Two non-structural proteins (Orf1ab and Orf3a) and two structural proteins (M and S proteins) were selected and subjected to B and T cells epitopes prediction and a vaccine was constructed. The constructed was checked for stability, effectiveness and safety using in silico tools.
CTL and HTL epitopes were selected based on their high binding affinity towards MHC-I and MHC-II and a vaccine was constructed. The vaccine was found to be antigenic (0.44), non-allergenic (-0.83), stable (instability index 32) and hydrophilic (GRAVY -0.027). The vaccine was modelled for docking to evaluate its molecular level interaction with human TLR-3 and 4. Immune simulation ensured the vaccine can efficiently induce the host immune response. The vaccine sequence was reverse translated into for cloning into pET28a(+) vector for cloning into E.coli. The CAI value of 9.61 given by Jcat ensured the maximal expression.
The current designed vaccine is confirmed by in silico tools to be capable of inducing appropriate immune response and requires experimental validation to verify the results.