Multi-epitope-based vaccine designing against Junín virus glycoprotein: immunoinformatics approach

Abstract

Background

The Junín virus (JUNV) is well known for causing argentine haemorrhagic fever (AHF), a severe endemic disease in farming premises. The glycoprotein of JUNV is an important therapeutic target in vaccine design. Despite using drugs and neutralizing weakened antibodies being used in the medication, neither the severity reduced nor eradicated the infection. However, this constraint can be resolved by immunoinformatic approaches.

Results

The glycoprotein fasta sequence was retrieved from NCBI to anticipate the B cell and T cell epitopes through the Immune Epitope Database. Furthermore, each epitope underwent validation in Vaxijen 2.0, Aller Top, and Toxin Pred to find antigenic, nonallergic, and non-toxic peptides. Moreover, the vaccine is designed with appropriate adjuvants and linkers. Subsequently, physicochemical properties were determined in ProtParam including solubility and disulphide bonds in the SCRATCH server. The vaccine 3D structure was built using I-TASSER and refined in ModRefine. Docking between JUNV glycoprotein (PDB ID:5NUZ) with a built vaccine revealed a balanced docked complex visualized in the Drug Discovery studio, identified 280 hydrogen bonds between them. The docking score of − 15.5 kcal/mol was determined in the MM/GBSA analysis in HawkDock. MD simulations employed using the GROMACS at 20 ns resulted in minimal deviation and fewer fluctuations, particularly with high hydrogen bond-forming residues.

Conclusion

However, these findings present a potential vaccine for developing against JUNV glycoprotein after validating the epitopes and 3D vaccine construct through in silico methods. Therefore, further investigation in the wet laboratory is necessary to confirm the potentiality of the predicted vaccine.