Epitopes- Based Vaccine Design Against Foot and Mouth Disease SAT2 Serotype from Sudanese Isolate by Using Immunoinformatic Approaches

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) has been endemic in Sudan for decades and causes continuous outbreaks that have a direct negative impact on the animal population and prevent the exportation of animals from the country. The high diversity of FMD serotypes, especially SAT2 and A serotypes, hinders the development of effective vaccines since the most important component of vaccination is the degree of cross-protection provided by the vaccine against currently circulating field viruses. An immunoinformatic approach was utilized to predict a multi-epitope peptide vaccine design against the SAT2 serotype from a Sudanese isolate targeting virus capsid region P1. The virus capsid region P1 comprises the major immunogenic epitopes that confer protection against the FMD virus. Two predicted T-cell epitopes were identified that showed high binding affinity with MHC1 alleles (VQRSRQSTL and YHAEWDTGL) and high conservation with SAT2 African serotypes and were located within the VP1 and VP3 proteins, respectively. Only one epitope was predicted for B cells (LPATPEDAAH), which scored above the threshold in Bepipred linear epitope, Emini surface accessibility, and Kolaskar and Tongaonkar antigenicity and is located in VP3 protein. Molecular docking of the peptides (VQRSRQSTL and YHAEWDTGL) with the MHC1 allele showed satisfactory interaction with the binding sites of BoLA-HD6 using UCSF chimera 1.13.1 software. The peptide VQRSRQSTL showed remarkable hydrophobic interaction with the BoLA-HD6 allele, which was superior to the other peptides. This study is the first to propose a peptide vaccine against FMD SAT2 serotypes from a Sudanese isolate.