Analysis of Envelope Glycoprotein (E2) of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) for proposing efficient multi-epitope peptide vaccine based on immuno-informatics approach

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) that causes viral hepatitis is producing 1.5 million patients every year worldwide to boost chronically infected number of people to 58 million susceptible in developing liver carcinoma and cirrhosis. Hence, for designing a preventive vaccine, cost- friendly and convenient immuno-informatics approach can be exploited that constructs multi-epitope peptide vaccine. In this study, envelope glycoprotein (E2) sequences from genotype1, 2, 3 and 4 were evaluated due to their prevalence. E2 protein was considered as the mostsuitable antigen to run multiple sequence alignment (MSA) and numerous immuno- informatics web servers were used to predict efficient cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL), helper Tlymphocyte (HTL) and B cell epitope that resulted in 1 CTL, 1 HTL and 3 B cell epitopes to get included in the vaccine construct along with HSP60 adjuvant. Finally, the vaccine peptide was analyzed in different parameters to present it as a potential candidate against HCV.