A NOVEL MULTI-EPITOPE VACCINE AGAINST NIPAH VIRUS USING REVERSE VACCINOLOGY
Abstract
Nipah virus (NiV) is a severe pathogen of significant zoonotic potential that causes repeated pandemics of the respiratory system disease and encephalitis, but there is no approved national vaccine against it as of now. This paper has used a reverse vaccinology approach to develop a multi-epitope vaccine against NiV. Viral proteins (nucleoprotein, phosphoprotein, glycoprotein, and matrix protein) were obtained in the UniProt database and filtered with VaxiJen. RANKPEP was used to predict T cell epitopes that had a broad MHC class I and II coverage, and the BepiPred was used to find the linear B-cell epitopes. Appropriate linkers to selected domains were attached, and a chimeric vaccine candidate was formed. The construct was finally shown to be very antigenic, non-allergen, and non-toxic. Analysis showed that the structure was stable, aliphatic index was high, and hydropathicity was almost neutral (GRAVY: -0.065). Secondary structure analysis showed that there were equal proportions of a-helices, b-strands, and coils. AlphaFold prediction and GalaxyRefine refinement yielded a high-quality structure with 98.7% of its residues represented in preferred Ramachandran regions. ClusPro molecular docking depicted positive interactions with HLA molecules and Toll-like receptor 4, and it strongly suggests the activation of adaptive and innate immune responses. The results suggest that our multi-epitope vaccine is an immunogenic and structurally stable vaccine construct against NiV, which should be further experimentally validated.
Keywords
- A NOVEL MULTI-EPITOPE
- VACCINE AGAINST NIPAH VIRUS
- USING REVERSE VACCINOLOGY
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