A Candidate Multi-Epitope Vaccine Against Pathogenic Chandipura Vesiculovirus Identified using Immunoinformatics.

Abstract Chandipura vesiculovirus (CHPV) is a rapidly emerging pathogen responsible for causing acute encephalitis. Due to its widespread occurrence in Asian and African countries, this has become a global threat, and there is an urgent need to design an effective and non-allergenic vaccine against this pathogen. The conventional method of vaccine design involves large proteins or whole organism which leads to unnecessary antigenic load with increased chances of allergenic reactions. In addition, the process is also very time consuming and labour intensive. These limitations can be overcome by peptide-based vaccines comprising of short immunogenic peptide fragments that can elicit highly targeted immune responses, avoiding the chances of allergenic reactions, in a relatively shorter time span. The multi-epitope vaccine constructed using CTL, HTL and IFN-γ epitopes was able to elicit specific immune responses when exposed to the pathogen, in-silico. Not only that, Molecular Docking and Molecular Dynamics Simulation studies confirmed a stable interaction of the vaccine with the immune receptors. Several physicochemical analyses of the designed vaccine candidate confirmed it to be highly immunogenic and non-allergic. The computer-aided analysis performed in this study suggests that the designed multi-epitope vaccine can elicit specific immune responses and can be a potential candidate against CHPV.