Abstract
The coronavirus pandemic is a major public health crisis affecting global health systems with dire socioeconomic consequences, especially in vulnerable regions such as Latin America (LATAM). There is an urgent need for a vaccine to help control contagion, reduce mortality and alleviate social costs. In this study, we propose a rational multi-epitope candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Using bioinformatics, we constructed a library of potential vaccine peptides, based on the affinity of the most common major human histocompatibility complex (HLA) I and II molecules in the LATAM population to predict immunological complexes among antigenic, non-toxic and non-allergenic peptides extracted from the conserved regions of 92 proteomes. Although HLA-C, had the greatest antigenic peptide capacity from SARS-CoV-2, HLA-B and HLA-A, could be more relevant based on COVID-19 risk of infection in LATAM countries. We also used three-dimensional structures of SARS-CoV-2 proteins to identify potential regions for antibody production. The best HLA-I and II predictions (with increased coverage in common alleles and regions evoking B lymphocyte responses) were grouped into an optimized final multi-epitope construct containing the adjuvants Beta defensin-3, TpD, and PADRE, which are recognized for invoking a safe and specific immune response. Finally, we used Molecular Dynamics to identify the multi-epitope construct which may be a stable target for TLR-4/MD-2. This would prove to be safe and provide the physicochemical requirements for conducting experimental tests around the world.
Highlights
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pathogen that emerged towards the end of 2019, primarily affects the respiratory tract
We studied the most frequent alleles in Latin America (LATAM), we only have one severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 proteome from Brazil in the sample of proteomes, that were selected for the in silico analysis described in the pipeline (Figure 1—Pipeline) and available in (Table S1)
Are its effects devastating to public health, but they have set back the progress made over decades in other fields like economics, equity regarding social determinants in health and social management of other endemics outbreaks, especially in regions with emerging economies
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pathogen that emerged towards the end of 2019, primarily affects the respiratory tract. The first infected patient was identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The origin of the virus is thought to be the Wuhan seafood market, some cases had no connection to this location. The virus spread rapidly through Wuhan and shortly thereafter to the rest of China’s provinces [1,3]. By 20 February 2020, 19 countries had reported cases and mortalities caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In March of 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS-CoV-2 the etiologic agent of the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus [3,4]
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