1. In silico design of a novel multi-epitope vaccine against HCV infection through immunoinformatics approaches.
- Author
-
Ahmad S, Demneh FM, Rehman B, Almanaa TN, Akhtar N, Pazoki-Toroudi H, Shojaeian A, Ghatrehsamani M, and Sanami S
- Subjects
- Humans, Computer Simulation, Hepacivirus immunology, Molecular Docking Simulation, Molecular Dynamics Simulation, Toll-Like Receptor 2 immunology, Toll-Like Receptor 2 chemistry, Toll-Like Receptor 4 immunology, Toll-Like Receptor 4 metabolism, Viral Envelope Proteins immunology, Viral Envelope Proteins chemistry, Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte immunology, Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte chemistry, Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte immunology, Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte chemistry, Hepatitis C prevention & control, Hepatitis C immunology, Immunoinformatics, Viral Hepatitis Vaccines immunology, Viral Hepatitis Vaccines chemistry
- Abstract
Infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the causes of liver cancer, which is the world's sixth most prevalent and third most lethal cancer. The current treatments do not prevent reinfection; because they are expensive, their usage is limited to developed nations. Therefore, a prophylactic vaccine is essential to control this virus. Hence, in this study, an immunoinformatics method was applied to design a multi-epitope vaccine against HCV. The best B- and T-cell epitopes from conserved regions of the E2 protein of seven HCV genotypes were joined with the appropriate linkers to design a multi-epitope vaccine. In addition, cholera enterotoxin subunit B (CtxB) was included as an adjuvant in the vaccine construct. This study is the first to present this epitopes-adjuvant combination. The vaccine had acceptable physicochemical characteristics. The vaccine's 3D structure was predicted and validated. The vaccine's binding stability with Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and TLR4 was confirmed using molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The immune simulation revealed the vaccine's efficacy by increasing the population of B and T cells in response to vaccination. In silico expression in Escherichia coli (E. coli) was also successful., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF