In silico design and evaluation of a multi-epitope and multi-antigenic African swine fever vaccine

African Swine Fever (ASF) is caused by a highly contagious and fatal hemorrhagic virus, which in 2019 alone in Asia, has killed 8 million pigs with a devastating estimated economic loss amounting to $130 billion. There were attempts to control ASFV transmission; however, developed vaccines failed to produce lasting immunity. Currently, no vaccine has been approved yet. This study designed a novel multi-epitope and multi-antigenic vaccine using open-access bioinformatics tools. B-cell, helper-T and cytotoxic T-cell epitopes were predicted using consensus sequences from ASFV genotypes of antigens p12, p17, p22, p54, p72, and CD2v, and combined with adjuvants and linkers to form the ASF vaccine. Analyses revealed that the ASF vaccine is stable, antigenic, non-allergenic, and not cross-reactive. Docking of SLA-1 to CTL-HTL regions of the developed vaccine revealed that it effectively binds to SLA-1, a vital process in priming an effective immune response. Immune simulations demonstrated that the designed ASF vaccine can elicit primary and secondary immune responses, and stimulate the production of effector immune cells and cytokines. Overall, these results revealed that the designed multi-epitope and multi-antigenic ASF vaccine is potentially effective and warrants further in vitro and in vivo studies to confirm its protective function against ASFV infection.