Designing an efficient multi-epitope vaccine displaying interactions with diverse HLA molecules for an efficient humoral and cellular immune response to prevent COVID-19 infection

Abstract

A multi-epitopic vaccine construct comprising of B-cell, CTL, HTL epitopes was developed along with fusion of adjuvant and linkers. The epitopes identified herein are reported for the first time and were predicted to be highly antigenic, stable, nonallergen, nontoxic and displayed conservation across several SARS-CoV-2 isolates from different countries. Additionally, the epitopes associated with maximum HLA alleles and population coverage analysis shows the proposed epitopes would be a relevant representative of large proportion of the world population. A reliable three-dimensional structure of the vaccine construct was developed. Consequently, docking and molecular-dynamics simulation ensured the stable interaction between vaccine and innate-immune receptor.