Epitope - based Peptide Vaccine Against Glycoprotein GPC Precursor of Lujo Virus using Immunoinformatics Approaches

Abstract

Background: Lujo virus (LUJV) is a highly fatal human pathogen belonging to the Arenaviridae family. Lujo virus causes viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF). An In silico molecular docking was performed on the GPC domain of Lujo virus in complex with the first CUB domain of neuropilin-2.

The aim of this study is to predict an effective epitope-based vaccine against the glycoprotein GPC precursor of Lujo virususing immunoin formatics approaches.

Methods and Materials: A glycoprotein GPC precursor of Lujo virus Sequence was retrieved from NCBI. Different prediction tools were then used to analyze the nominee’s epitopes in BepiPred-2.0: Sequential B-Cell Epitope Predictor for B-cell, T-cell MHC class II & I. Later the proposed peptides were docked using the Auto dock 4.0 software program.

Results and Conclusions: The proposed and promising peptides FWYLNHTKL and YMFSVTLCI has shown a very strong binding affinity to MHC class I & IIalleles with high population coverage for the world, South Africa, and Sudan. This indicates a strong potential to formulate a new vaccine, especially with the peptide YMFSVTLCI which is likely to be the first proposed epitope-based vaccine against glycoprotein GPC of Lujo virus. This study recommends an in-vivo assessment for the most promising peptides especially FWYLNHTKL, YMFSVTLCI and LPCPKPHRLR.