Immunoinformatics-guided approach for designing a pan-proteome multi-epitope subunit vaccine against African swine fever virus

Abstract

Despite being identified over a hundred years ago, there is still no commercially available vaccine for the highly contagious and deadly African swine fever virus (ASFV). This study used immunoinformatics for the rapid and inexpensive designing of a safe and effective multi-epitope subunit vaccine for ASFV. A total of 18,858 proteins from 100 well-annotated ASFV proteomes were screened using various computational tools to identify potential epitopes, or peptides capable of triggering an immune response in swine. Proteins from genotypes I and II were prioritized for their involvement in the recent global ASFV outbreaks. The screened epitopes exhibited promising qualities that positioned them as effective components of the ASFV vaccine. They demonstrated antigenicity, immunogenicity, and cytokine-inducing properties indicating their ability to induce potent immune responses. They have strong binding affinities to multiple swine allele receptors suggesting a high likelihood of yielding more amplified responses. Moreover, they were non-allergenic and non-toxic, a crucial prerequisite for ensuring safety and minimizing any potential adverse effects when the vaccine is processed within the host. Integrated with an immunogenic 50S ribosomal protein adjuvant and linkers, the epitopes formed a 364-amino acid multi-epitope subunit vaccine. The ASFV vaccine construct exhibited notable immunogenicity in immune simulation and molecular docking analyses, and stable profiles in secondary and tertiary structure assessments. Moreover, this study designed an optimized codon for efficient translation of the ASFV vaccine construct into the Escherichia coli K-12 expression system using the pET28a(+) vector. Overall, both sequence and structural evaluations suggested the potential of the ASFV vaccine construct as a candidate for controlling and eradicating outbreaks caused by the pathogen.