In Silico Prediction of a Novel Universal Multi-epitope Peptide Vaccine in the Whole Spike Glycoprotein of MERS CoV

Abstract

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a new viral emergent human disease caused by a novel strain of Coronavirus. First known case of MERS occurred in Jordan in April 2012, by December 2015, the disease had already struck 1,621 persons of whom 584 died. Despite of the high mortality rate of the infection, there are no clinically approved vaccines or antiviral drugs, thus, the aim of this study is to analyze Spike glycoprotein strains using in silico approaches looking for conservancy, which is further studied to predict all potential epitopes that can be used after in vitro and in vivo confirmation as a therapeutic peptide vaccine. Total of 255 Spike glycoprotein variants retrieved from NCBI database were aligned, to select the conserved regions for epitopes prediction. By means of IEDB analysis resource B and T cell epitopes were predicted and population coverage was calculated. Two epitopes were proposed for international therapeutic peptide vaccine for B cell (GTPPQVY and LTPRSVRSVP). Regarding T cell, FSFGVTQEY epitope was highly recommended as therapeutic peptide vaccine to interact with MHC class I along with eight other epitopes that showed good population coverage against the whole world population. Four epitopes showed high affinity to interact with MHC class II alleles (FNLTLLEPV, FAAIPFAQS, SFAAIPFAQ and FYVYKLQPL) with excellent population coverage throughout the world and Saudi Arabia. Herd immunity protocols can be conducted in countries with low population coverage to minimize the active transmission of the virus especially among people contacting camels and other groups at risk.