In Silico construction and evaluation of a potential multi-epitope subunit vaccine constructed against Rabies virus

Abstract

Rabies is a lethal zoonotic disease which is mainly contracted through the bite of rabid animals, especially canines. In Asian countries including Bangladesh rabies is still an endemic listed by the World Health Organization which claims 59,000 lives annually. The current treatment mainly includes multiple dose post exposure prophylaxis vaccine or rabies immunoglobulin (RIG) transfusion with no available medications. Our research centers on computational approaches to design a multi-epitope vaccine in-silico as a preventive measure to combat Rabies. The vaccine construct included cytotoxic T lymphocytes, helper T lymphocytes and B cell lymphocytes epitopes which were screened for antigenicity, allergenicity and toxicity and universally acknowledged linkers were used to conjoin them. The final construct displayed a significant antigenicity increase and was further investigated for acceptable physico-chemical properties and structural validation using Ramachandran and Z-score analysis. Evaluation of our construct’s interaction with immune receptors was done through molecular docking with TLR4. Finally, immune simulation was conducted computationally, which assured that our construct was efficacious enough to trigger cellular and humoral responses while offering long-term immunity against this virus.