Multi-epitope peptide vaccine prediction against newcastle disease virus using immuno-informatics approaches

Newcastle disease is one of the most critical disease in poultry and wild birds, largely due to its high morbidity and mortality, as well as its worldwide distribution and threat of considerable economic losses to avian industries caused by Newcastle disease virus (NDV). The NDV can cause clinical signs varying from subclinical infections to 100% mortality, depending on the susceptibility of the host and the virulence of the virus. The virus is classified into velogenic (viscerotropic velogenic and neurotropic velogenic), mesogenic and lentogenic. The objectives of this study was to design a peptide vaccine using immunoinformatics approaches. In total, 12 NDV fusion proteins retrieved from NCBI database were aligned to determine the conservancy and candidate epitopes were analysed by predictions tools from Immune Epitope Database. Then the 3D structure of the conserved region was modelled using the Swiss Model and aligned using PyMol software. Two epitopes were predicted as a peptide vaccine for B cell (DKAVNVYTSSQT and NMPKDKEACAKAPLEA). This is a preliminary study of designing an epitope-based peptide vaccine against NDV, and we recommend further study to identify the interaction between these peptides with T cells and antibodies.