Abdul Aziz Al-Fattah Yahaya (2024) Experimental validation of immunogenic Sars-Cov-2 B- and T-cell epitopes for the development of a multi-epitope peptide vaccine candidate. Masters thesis, Sunway University.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus. The rapid spread of this disease in December of 2019 caused the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in over 771 million infections globally and over 6.9 million deaths as of 18th October 2023. Over the course of the pandemic, several vaccines had been developed to confer protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection but these vaccines were developed against the Wuhan strain and are less effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern such as the Omicron variant. This study aims to overcome the challenges posed by the emergence of these variants through the development of a multi-epitope peptide vaccine that consists of peptides specifying epitopes derived from highly conserved, antigenic regions of viral proteins capable of inducing humoral and cellular immune responses. In this study, literature mining was performed to search for peptide sequences from publications that had identified B- and T-cell epitopes through in silico bioinformatics predictions and epitope mapping studies performed using convalescent sera and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). The peptides specifying B-cell epitopes were selected from the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein while the peptides specifying T-cell epitopes were derived from the Membrane, Nucleocapsid, NSP6 and ORF3a proteins. The B-cell peptides were individually immunized into BALB/c mice and validated for neutralizing antibody production and the T-cell peptides were immunized into BALB/c mice in pools and then evaluated in terms of IFN-γ cytokine response. A multi-epitope peptide vaccine candidate was then formulated by linking the most immunogenic peptides and evaluating the immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate in the BALB/c mice. The vaccine candidate was found to induce an IgG and neutralizing antibody response but failed to elicit IFN-γ T-cell response in mice. As a successful vaccine must induce a strong humoral and cellular immune response, the vaccine candidate needs to be improved further to generate strong cell-mediated immunity.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | SARS-CoV-2; multi-epitope; peptide vaccine; COVID-19 |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QR Microbiology > QR180 Immunology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine R Medicine > RM Therapeutics. Pharmacology |
| Divisions: | Sunway University > Faculty of Medical and Life Sciences [formerly School of Medical and Life Sciences until 14 March 2025; School of Healthcare and Medical Sciences until 2020] |
| Depositing User: | Ms Yong Yee Chan |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Oct 2026 11:13 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Oct 2026 11:14 |
| URI: | http://repository.sunway.edu.my/id/eprint/3668 |
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