EpiCurator: an immunoinformatic workflow to predict and prioritize SARS-CoV-2 epitopes

Abstract:

The ongoing coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, triggered by the emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus, represents a global public health challenge. Therefore, the development of effective vaccines is an urgent need to prevent and control virus spread. One of the vaccine production strategies uses the in silico epitope prediction from the virus genome by immunoinformatic approaches, which assist in selecting candidate epitopes for in vitro and clinical trials research. This study introduces the EpiCurator workflow to predict and prioritize epitopes from SARS-CoV-2 genomes by combining a series of computational filtering tools. To validate the workflow effectiveness, SARS-CoV-2 genomes retrieved from the GISAID database were analyzed. We identified 11 epitopes in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of Spike glycoprotein, an important antigenic determinant, not previously described in the literature or published on the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). Interestingly, these epitopes have a combination of important properties: recognized in sequences of the current variants of concern, present high antigenicity, conservancy, and broad population coverage. The RBD epitopes were the source for a multi-epitope design to in silico validation of their immunogenic potential. The multi-epitope overall quality was computationally validated, endorsing its efficiency to trigger an effective immune response since it has stability, high antigenicity and strong interactions with Toll-Like Receptors (TLR). Taken together, the findings in the current study demonstrated the efficacy of the workflow for epitopes discovery, providing target candidates for immunogen development.

SEEK ID: https://workflowhub.eu/publications/23

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.12548

Teams: yPublish - Bioinfo tools

Publication type: Journal

Journal: PeerJ

Citation: PeerJ 9:e12548

Date Published: 2021

Registered Mode: by DOI

Authors: Cristina S. Ferreira, Yasmmin C. Martins, Rangel Celso Souza, Ana Tereza R. Vasconcelos

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Citation
Ferreira, C. S., Martins, Y. C., Souza, R. C., & Vasconcelos, A. T. R. (2021). EpiCurator: an immunoinformatic workflow to predict and prioritize SARS-CoV-2 epitopes. In PeerJ (Vol. 9, p. e12548). PeerJ. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.12548
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Created: 23rd Oct 2023 at 15:04

Last updated: 23rd Oct 2023 at 15:06

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