Prediction of SARS-CoV2 spike protein epitopes reveals HLA-associated susceptibility

SARS-CoV2 infection is causing a pandemic disease that is reflected in important public health problems worldwide. HLA-based epitope prediction and association with susceptibility provides an important base for treatment design. Hence the aim of this study is to predict the best antigen-presenting HLA-class I and II alleles in top affected populations and determine probable susceptibility associations. A bioinformatic prediction of T cell epitopes and their restricted HLA class I and II alleles was performed to predict immunogenic epitopes and HLA alleles from the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, together with molecular modeling analysis and a correlation with the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 infection in 14 countries. Here, we describe a set of ten highly immunogenic epitopes, together with different HLA alleles that can efficiently present these epitopes to T cells. Most of these epitopes are located within the S1 subunit of the spike protein, suggesting that this area is highly immunogenic. A statistical correlation was found between the frequency of HLA-A*02:03 and HLA-A*31:01 and a low cumulative incidence in the selected countries.