Design of a multi-epitope based vaccine consisted of immunodominant epitopes of structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 using immunoinformatics approach.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has shown rapid global spread and resulted in a significant death toll worldwide. In this study, we aimed to design a multi-epitope vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 based on structural proteins S, M, N and E. We identified B and T cell epitopes and then the antigenicity, toxicity, allergenicity and similarity of predicted epitopes were analyzed. T-cell epitopes were docked with corresponding HLA alleles. Consequently, the selected T and B-cell epitopes were included in the final construct. All selected epitopes were connected with different linkers and Flagellin and pan-HLA DR binding epitopes (PADRE) as an adjuvant were used in the vaccine construct. Furthermore, molecular docking was used to evaluate the complex between the final vaccine construct and two alleles, HLA-A*02:01 and HLA-DRB1*01:01. Finally, codons were optimized for in silico cloning into pET28a (+) vector using SnapGene. The final vaccine construct comprised 11 CTL, HTL and B-cell epitopes corresponding to 394 amino acid residues. In silico evaluation showed that the designed vaccine might potentially promote an immune response. Further in vivo pre-clinical and clinical testing is required to determine the safety and efficacy of the designed vaccine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.