Monkeypox is a zoonotic virus that has recently affected different
countries worldwide. On July 23, 2022, the WHO declared the outbreak of
monkeypox as a public health emergency of international concern.
Surveillance studies conducted in Central Africa in the 1980s and later
during outbreaks in the same region showed smallpox vaccines to be
clinically somewhat effective against Monkeypox virus. However, there is
no specific vaccine against this virus. This research used
bioinformatics techniques to establish a novel multi-epitope vaccine
candidate against Monkeypox that can induce a strong immune response.
Five well-known antigenic proteins (E8L, A30L, A35R, A29L, and B21R) of
the virus were picked and assessed as possible immunogenic peptides. Two
suitable peptide candidates were selected according to bio-informatics
analysis. Based upon in silico evaluation, two multi-epitope
vaccine candidates (ALALAR and ALAL) were built with rich-epitope
domains consisting of high-ranking T and B-cell epitopes. After
predicting and evaluating the 3D structure of the protein candidates,
the most efficient 3D models were considered for docking studies with
Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and the HLA-A * 11:01, HLA-A*01:01,
HLA-A*02:01, HLA-A*03:01, HLA-A*07:02, HLA-A*15:01, HLA-A*30:01
receptors. Subsequently, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of up to 150
nanoseconds was employed to assess the durability of the interaction of
the vaccine candidates with immune receptors. MD studies showed that
M5-HLA-A*11:01, ALAL-TLR4, and ALALAR-TLR4 complexes were stable during
simulation. Analysis of the in silico outcomes indicates that the
M5 peptide and ALAL and ALALAR proteins may be suitable vaccine
candidates against the Monkeypox virus.Communicated by Ramaswamy H.
Sarma.