Sudanese researchers design potential COVID-19 vaccine 

In 2020, before vaccines against COVID-19 were readily available, researchers in Sudan proposed a vaccine that would stimulate an immune response against the envelope protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

At the time, many researchers were looking for potential safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19, which had just begun spreading rapidly around the world. 

Peptide-based vaccines are a safe and cheaper alternative compared to other types of vaccines. Peptides are short strings of amino acids and these amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which contain multiple peptides. An epitope is a target peptide that can be recognised by the body's immune system. Peptide-based vaccines make use of epitopes from the part of the virus that causes an immune response in the body, in this case the envelope protein, or E protein. 

The E protein forms part of the protein coat (“cover”) surrounding the virus. This protein plays a key role in how the virus infects cells and how it causes disease.

The researchers in this study aimed to design a peptide-based vaccine by comparing the genetic sequences of peptides shared between different coronavirus strains, using the  envelope (E) protein as a target.

First they searched databases for the genetic sequences of potential peptide targets. Next, they used computer models and their knowledge about how vaccines stimulate an immune response to identify genetic sequences that could be used to design a vaccine.

The researchers were able to identify a number of peptides shared between different coronavirus strains that have the potential to be used as vaccines, but settled on the E protein as their vaccine candidate. They say they successfully designed a protein-based vaccine against COVID-19 using the sequence of this envelope protein. 

At the time, researchers said they were the first to identify parts of the envelope (E) protein (peptides) as vaccine candidates for COVID-19. Their findings highlighted the potential of protein-based vaccines, which were safe, new, affordable and an effective way of developing a new vaccine against COVID-19. 

However, their vaccine candidate would still have needed to be tested further in a clinical environment to make sure it was safe and effective.

According to the Sudanese research team behind this study, protein vaccines are relatively inexpensive to develop, so they have great potential to be developed and distributed in developing countries. 

Abstract

Background. A new endemic disease has spread across Wuhan City, China, in December 2019. Within few weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a novel coronavirus designated as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In late January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of a “public-health emergency of international concern” due to the rapid and increasing spread of the disease worldwide. Currently, there is no vaccine or approved treatment for this emerging infection; thus, the objective of this study is to design a multiepitope peptide vaccine against COVID-19 using an immunoinformatics approach. Method. Several techniques facilitating the combination of the immunoinformatics approach and comparative genomic approach were used in order to determine the potential peptides for designing the T-cell epitope-based peptide vaccine using the envelope protein of 2019-nCoV as a target. Results. Extensive mutations, insertion, and deletion were discovered with comparative sequencing in the COVID-19 strain. Additionally, ten peptides binding to MHC class I and MHC class II were found to be promising candidates for vaccine design with adequate world population coverage of 88.5% and 99.99%, respectively. Conclusion. The T-cell epitope-based peptide vaccine was designed for COVID-19 using the envelope protein as an immunogenic target. Nevertheless, the proposed vaccine rapidly needs to be validated clinically in order to ensure its safety and immunogenic profile to help stop this epidemic before it leads to devastating global outbreaks.

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