Vaccinomics approach for scheming potential epitope-based peptide vaccine by targeting l-protein of Marburg virus

Marburg virus is one of the world's most threatening diseases, causing extreme hemorrhagic fever, with a death rate of up to 90%. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently not authorized any treatments or vaccinations for the hindrance and post-exposure of the Marburg virus. In the present study, the vaccinomics methodology was adopted to design a potential novel peptide vaccine against the Marburg virus, targeting RNA-directed RNA polymerase (l). A total of 48 l-proteins from diverse variants of the Marburg virus were collected from the NCBI GenBank server and used to classify the best antigenic protein leading to predict equally T and B-cell epitopes. Initially, the top 26 epitopes were evaluated for the attraction with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II alleles. Finally, four prospective central epitopes NLSDLTFLI, FRYEFTRHF, YRLRNSTAL, and YRVRNVQTL were carefully chosen. Among these, FRYEFTRHF and YRVRNVQTL peptides showed 100% conservancy. Though YRLRNSTAL showed 95.74% conservancy, it demonstrated the highest combined score as T cell epitope (2.5461) and population coverage of 94.42% among the whole world population. The epitope was found non-allergenic, and docking interactions with human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) also verified. Finally, in vivo analysis of the recommended peptides might contribute to the advancement of an efficient and exclusively prevalent vaccine that would be an active route to impede the virus spreading.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40203-021-00080-3.