• A novel multi-epitope vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern strains applying immunoinformatics approaches
  • Samaneh Jahandar-Lashaki,1,* Safar Farajnia,2 Morteza Milani,3 Rana Yousefzadeh,4
    1. 1-Biotechnology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran , 2-Drug Applied Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
    2. Drug Applied Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
    3. Medical Biotechnology Department, Faculty of Advanced Medical Science, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
    4. Central Medical Laboratory, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran


  • Introduction: A newly emerged Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease, emerged in Wuhan in December 2019. Currently, Millions of deaths have been attributed to SARS-CoV-2, raising the call for efficient vaccines and treatments worldwide. Due to changes in the virus genome followed by mutations, variants with higher transmission ability and pathogenicity have emerged and raised excessive concerns about the efficiency of the developed vaccines. This study aimed to design a multi-epitope vaccine that targets the primary SARS-CoV-2 strain and its five variants of concern using immunoinformatics approaches.
  • Methods: B-cell, cytotoxic T lymphocytes, and helper T lymphocytes epitopes of the conserved and mutated positions of different SARS-CoV-2 surface glycoproteins were predicted and attached utilizing appropriate linkers. To provoke the immune response, the cholera toxin B subunit was also utilized as an adjuvant.
  • Results: This designed vaccine showed strong binding to the tool-like receptor in molecular docking analyzes (energy score of -1186.6). In silico cloning study also showed high and soluble expression of the final multi-epitope vaccine in the Escherichia coli (DH5) expression system. Further immunoinformatics analyses have shown the designed vaccine's high safety, stability, and efficacy, suggesting that our vaccine is a promising candidate against primary SARS-CoV-2 and its variants of concern strains.
  • Conclusion: In this study, the vaccine designed by immunoinformatics tools showed specific reactivity to Toll-like receptor. Given the validation of other epitope-based vaccines, our vaccine might be capable of providing strong immunity in a wide range of populations.
  • Keywords: Multi-Epitope vaccine, SARS-CoV-2, Variants of Concern (VOCs), COVID-19