Designing of Multiepitope-based Subunit Vaccine (MESV) against Prevalent Serotype of Foot and Mouth Disease Virus (FMDV) using Immunoinformatics Approach.

Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) is causing 100% morbidity in adult animals with a high mortality rate in young animals due to cardiomyopathy. The disease-causing virus (FMDV) has been classified into seven serotypes and several topotypes. Amongst serotypes, the serotype O is predominantly present in Pakistan. A vaccine that should be safer and appears as an alternative to conventional vaccines that have failed to control the disease is required. Keeping in view, a multiepitope-based subunit vaccine (MESV) is designed using computational biology-based approaches. The sequence and structural characterization of capsid proteins and 3Cpro of O PanAsia-II sub-lineage are carried out for screening the antigenic proteins. Further, the B- and T-cell epitopes are selected based on toxicity, antigenicity, allergenicity, conservancy, and topology. The Cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes are confirmed through molecular interactions with selected bovine alleles. The designed MESV is found stable, hydrophilic, antigenic, non-allergen, exposed extracellularly, non-toxic, and soluble. It will stimulate the protective immune response against the viral challenge as it has shown a strong binding affinity with the TLR4. These results suggest that the developed MESV will prove to be a potential candidate vaccine in controlling the disease against serotype O. For expression and accumulation of stable protein the sequence that encodes the multiepitope-based subunit vaccine is codonoptimized following the codon preference of E. coli and is cloned in pET-28a (+). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]