Vol. 8, Special Issue 8, Part R (2024)

Abstract: The mosquito-borne zoonotic viral disease Japanese encephalitis belongs to the genus flavivirus was first time occurred in 1871 in Japan. The virus, which frequently affects pigs and horses majorly, can cause encephalitis (brain inflammation) and reproductive losses. Japanese encephalitis is occasionally a source of disease in humans causing child mortality and disability. Though the Japanese encephalitis vaccine is available, the duration of protection with a vaccine is not clear and the disease is persisting. Hence, in the present study, immuno-informatics and computational approaches were used to predict and design the multi-epitope vaccine in humans and pigs. The highly conserved linear B-cell epitopes, Cytotoxic T-cell, and Helper T-Lymphocytes epitopes for the nucleocapsid protein were identified and characterized in various isolates of Cambodia, China, India, and Thailand. The vaccine was constructed using distinct three adjuvants each for humans and pigs, further, the secondary structure, physicochemical properties, toxicity, antigenicity, and allergenicity of the designed vaccine are assessed to ensure its high quality. To determine proficient docking against Japanese encephalitis host receptors (human-GPR78 and pig-GKN3), the 3D structure of the designed vaccine is predicted, refined, and validated. Further, the best-docked analysis among them was selected for in-silico analysis. To ensure effective cloning and expression, the codon sequence was optimized and inserted into a pET28a (+) expressional vector. As a result, an effective and potential multi-epitope and multi-antigenic based vaccine was designed with a length of 6270 bp (human) and 8406 bp (pig) against Japanese encephalitis virus, which can be assessed further in clinical studies.