Multi-epitope based vaccine against yellow fever virus applying immunoinformatics approaches

Yellow fever disease is considered a re-emerging major health issue which has caused recent outbreaks with a high number of deaths. Tropical countries, mainly African and South American, are the most affected by Yellow fever outbreaks. Despite the availability of an attenuated vaccine, its use is limited for some groups such as pregnant and nursing women, immunocompromised and immunosuppressed patients, elderly people >65 years, infants <6 months and patients with biological disorders like thymus disorders. In order to achieve new preventive measures, we applied immunoinformatics approaches to develop a multi-epitope-based subunit vaccine for Yellow fever virus. Different epitopes, related to humoral and cell-mediated immunity, were predicted for complete polyproteins of two Yellow fever strains (Asibi and 17 D vaccine). Those epitopes common for both strains were mapped into a set of 137 sequences of Yellow fever virus, including 77 sequences from a recent outbreak at the state of Minas Gerais, southeast Brazil. Therefore, the present work uses robust bioinformatics approaches for the identification of a multi-epitope vaccine against the Yellow fever virus. Our results indicate that the identified multi-epitope vaccine might stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses and could be a potential vaccine candidate against Yellow fever virus infection. Hence, it should be subjected to further experimental validations. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.