?:abstract
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Currently, the whole world is facing a COVID-19 pandemic. As of now, approximately 0.15 million people around the globe are infected with the novel coronavirus. In the last decade, two strains of the coronavirus family, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV also resulted in epidemics in south Asian and the Middle Eastern countries with high mortality rate. This scenario demands the development of a putative vaccine which may provide immunity against all current and new evolving coronavirus strains. In this study, we design an epitope-based vaccine using an immunoinformatic approach. This vaccine may protect against all coronavirus strains. The vaccine is developed by considering the geographical distribution of coronavirus strains and host genetics (Chinese population). Nine experimentally validated epitopes sequences from coronavirus strains were used to derive the variants considering the conservancy in all strains. Further, the binding affinities of all derived variants were checked with most abundant HLA alleles in the Chinese population. Three MHC class-I epitopes from Spike glycoprotein and Nucleoprotein showed sufficient binding while one MHC class-II epitope from Spike glycoprotein found to be an effective binder. A cocktail of these epitopes gave more than 95% population coverage in the Chinese population. Moreover, MD simulation also supported the above-mentioned predictions. Further, in vivo studies are needed to confirm the immunogenic potential of these vaccines. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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