Multi valent DNA vaccine against group A human rotavirus: anin-silicoinvestigation

Summary Gastroenteritis due to single rotavirus causes huge economic loss annually. Severity of rotaviral diarrhoea among children is primarily manifested by different combinations of G and P types. Rotavirus surveillance studies resulted in two ambitious globally licensed vaccine namely, Rotarix and RotaTaq and a few other. However, post-vaccination surveillance studies indicate, vaccine failure and other complications such as intussusception, environmental enteric dysfunction, etc . Herein, we design a multivalent DNA vaccine against rotavirus and tested its efficiency by using in silico tools. Two main neutralizing rotaviral antigens i . e , VP7 and VP8 were taken into account and respectively 390, 450 known sequences of different serogroup have been analyzed to obtain a consensus sequence for epitope prediction. Epitopes specific for MHC-I and -II were predicted using IEDB and chosen based on their best IC 50 value and CPR. A good binding profile with a monoclonal antibody specific for B-cell antigens is displayed by all epitopes they were found to be non-allergenic in the human host. Ethnic specificity of the epitopes is also within acceptable range except for South African and Central American populations. We use pBI-CMV1 bidirectional mammalian expression vector to design the DNA vaccine, where we stapled manually integrated epitopes for VP7 and VP8 at MCS1 and 2 respectively. In conclusion, this study provides a new set of data for a new DNA vaccine against rotavirus.