Conserved envelope peptides containing multiple HLA-restricted T cell epitopes as vaccine candidate against Zika virus

Abstract

Envelope protein in Zika virus play important role in assembly of virions, host cell binding and membrane fusion and cover majority of the virion surface, which makes them ideal candidate for development of peptide vaccines against Zika virus. In the present study, conserved peptides containing multiple T cell epitopes were identified by different epitope predictions algorithms and docking studies were carried out to establish the binding affinity of these peptides with different HLA molecules. Employment of six epitope prediction tool and BLAST analysis resulted into seven non-self peptide fragments containing multiple HLA restricted T cell epitopes. The average population coverage for immunogenic response of these selected peptides was found out to be 76.37% and 98.13% for class I and II HLA specific respectively. Further, docking studies reveal that CD8+ T cell epitopes and CD4+ peptides which are part of selected were have shown good binding affinity with different HLA molecules. Six peptides were found to be non-allergic and non-toxic by in-silico analysis. Further, some of these peptides were found to be conserved in other viruses of flaviviridae family infecting human. Hence, it is suggested that these peptides may be considered for synthetic peptide vaccine design against Zika virus.