A Viroinformatics Study: B-Cell Polytope Mapping of Envelope Protein to Develop Vaccine Candidate against Four DENV Serotype

Abstract

Nowadays, dengue virus (DENV) is still become a global problem, even though the virus infection issues have reached half of the population in some countries each year. DENV belongs to the enveloped virus with positive-sense single-stranded RNA (+ssRNA) genus Flavivirus and belongs to the Flaviviridae family. DENV has structural proteins which consist of the envelope protein (E), capsid (C), and membrane (M). There are four serotypes of this virus which are DENV-1, 2, 3, and 4. These four serotypes are transmitted to humans through Aedes sp. The development of this vaccine is still in progress and the challenge of this DENV vaccine candidate design is to overcome the heterotypic infection and the expansion of coverage protection to all virus serotypes. This research uses design simulation for vaccine candidates using B cell epitope in all DENV’s serotypes envelope to trigger the antibody formation through bioinformatics method that consists of protein modeling, immunogenicity, toxicity, and immune stimulation. DENV envelope protein was predicted to have polytope that can be recognized by B cells and act as an antigen, have low similarity with the composing sequence of cell surface receptors on the body, and non-toxic, and then can trigger the population increase of B cell and IgM antibody production with high avidity to neutralize four of the DENV serotypes. We recommend the B cell polytype which consists of A, C, E, and G peptides be examined by the wet-lab approach.