Epitope‐based peptide vaccine design and target site depiction against Ebola viruses: an immunoinformatics study

Khan, M. A.; Hossain, M. U.; Rakib‐Uz‐Zaman, S. M.; Morshed, M. N.

Ebola viruses (EBOVs) have been identified as an emerging threat in recent year as it causes severe haemorrhagic fever in human. Epitope‐based vaccine design for EBOVs remains a top priority because a mere progress has been made in this regard. Another reason is the lack of antiviral drug and licensed vaccine although there is a severe outbreak in Central Africa. In this study, we aimed to design an epitope‐based vaccine that can trigger a significant immune response as well as to prognosticate inhibitor that can bind with potential drug target sites using various immunoinformatics and docking simulation tools. The capacity to induce both humoral and cell‐mediated immunity by T cell and B cell was checked for the selected protein. The peptide region spanning 9 amino acids from 42 to 50 and the sequence TLASIGTAF were found as the most potential B and T cell epitopes, respectively. This peptide could interact with 12 HLAs and showed high population coverage up to 80.99%. Using molecular docking, the epitope was further appraised for binding against HLA molecules to verify the binding cleft interaction. In addition with this, the allergenicity of the epitopes was also evaluated. In the post‐therapeutic strategy, docking study of predicted 3D structure identified suitable therapeutic inhibitor against targeted protein. However, this computational epitope‐based peptide vaccine designing and target site prediction against EBOVs open up a new horizon which may be the prospective way in Ebola viruses research; the results require validation by in vitro and in vivo experiments.