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. 2022 Dec;39(6):711-724.
doi: 10.1007/s10719-022-10083-7. Epub 2022 Oct 13.

Envelope Glycoprotein based multi-epitope vaccine against a co-infection of Human Herpesvirus 5 and Human Herpesvirus 6 using in silico strategies

Bharath Sai Gandhamaneni  1 , HemaNandini Rajendran Krishnamoorthy  1 , Shanthi Veerappapillai  1 , Soumya R Mohapatra  2   3 , Ramanathan Karuppasamy  4
Affiliations

Envelope Glycoprotein based multi-epitope vaccine against a co-infection of Human Herpesvirus 5 and Human Herpesvirus 6 using in silico strategies

Bharath Sai Gandhamaneni et al. Glycoconj J. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

The Human Betaherpesviruses HHV-5 and HHV-6 are quite inimical in immunocompromised hosts individually. A co-infection of both has been surmised to be far more disastrous. This can be attributed to a synergetic effect of their combined pathologies. While there have been attempts to develop a vaccine against each virus, no efforts were made to contrive an effective prophylaxis for the highly detrimental co-infection. In this study, an ensemble of viral envelope glycoproteins from both the viruses was utilized to design a multi-epitope vaccine using immunoinformatics tools. A collection of bacterial protein toll-like receptor agonists (BPTAs) was screened to identify a highly immunogenic adjuvant for the vaccine construct. The constructed vaccine was analysed using an array of methodologies ranging from World population coverage analysis to Immune simulation, whose results indicate high vaccine efficacy and stability. Furthermore, codon optimization and in silico cloning analysis were performed to check for efficient expression in a bacterial system. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the potential of the constructed vaccine to elicit an immune response against HHV-5 and HHV-6, thus supporting the viability of in vitro and in vivo studies.

Keywords: Human cytomegalovirus; Human herpesvirus 5; Human herpesvirus 6; Immunoinformatics; Vaccine design; Viral co-infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Schematic representation of the multi-epitope vaccine construct
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Secondary structure of the final vaccine construct (a) Sequence plot (b) PSIPRED cartoon
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Secondary structure of the final vaccine construct (a) Sequence plot (b) PSIPRED cartoon
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Modeled 3D structure of the final vaccine construct
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Predicted Discontinuous B-cell epitope with the best score
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
3D visualisation of the vaccine-TLR4 docked complex
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Molecular interactions between chains A, B of TLR-4 and the vaccine construct
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Immune simulation analysis (a) The antigen, the immunoglobulins and the immuno-complexes (b) Concentration of cytokines and interleukins
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
In silico cloning of the designed vaccine construct
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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