Ebola viruses (EBOVs) have been identified as an emerging threat in recent year as it causes severe haemorrhagic fever in human. Epitope-based vaccine design for EBOVs remains a top priority because a mere progress has been made in this regard. Another reason is the lack of antiviral drug and licensed vaccine although there is a severe outbreak in Central Africa. In this study, we aimed to design an epitope-based vaccine that can trigger a significant immune response as well as to prognosticate inhibitor that can bind with potential drug target sites using various immunoinformatics and docking simulation tools. The capacity to induce both humoral and cell-mediated immunity by T cell and B cell was checked for the selected protein. The peptide region spanning 9 amino acids from 42 to 50 and the sequence TLASIGTAF were found as the most potential B and T cell epitopes, respectively. This peptide could interact with 12 HLAs and showed high population coverage up to 80.99%. Using molecular docking, the epitope was further appraised for binding against HLA molecules to verify the binding cleft interaction. In addition with this, the allergenicity of the epitopes was also evaluated. In the post-therapeutic strategy, docking study of predicted 3D structure identified suitable therapeutic inhibitor against targeted protein. However, this computational epitope-based peptide vaccine designing and target site prediction against EBOVs open up a new horizon which may be the prospective way in Ebola viruses research; the results require validation by in vitro and in vivo experiments.

Graphical abstract

The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, signed on December 2, 1997

An efficient and durable multi-targeted therapeutic drug against hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has recently been a growing concern for tackling the chemoresistance of approved anti-HCC drugs. Recent studies indicated that methyltransferase-like (METTL) proteins including METTL1, METTL3, METTL6, METTL16, and METTL18, have overexpressed and associated with the progression of HCC malignancy, and making them excellent biomarkers. Here, we present a series of bioinformatics study including novel compound repurposing approach, molecular docking, pharmacophore modeling, and molecular dynamic simulation, which revealed two first-in-class highly potent catalytic multi-target inhibitors (ZINC70666503 and ZINC13000658 with 87% and 82% drug scores, respectively) of methyltransferase-like proteins. Comparatively, these two inhibitors showed a notable binding affinity against studied METTL proteins. Furthermore, ADME and toxicity analysis suggested that these two commercially available compounds have good drug-likeliness properties with no potent toxic effects. Of note, the molecular dynamics study supported their conformational stability and high selectivity at the pocket of proteins' adenosine moiety of S-Adenosyl Methionine. However, this comprehensive analysis needs in vivo validation to facilitate multi-targeting therapeutic development against hepatocellular carcinoma.

No abstract