A Novel Multi-Epitope Vaccine For Cross Protection Against Hepatitis C Virus (HCV): An Immunoinformatics Approach

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes acute and chronic human hepatitis infections. Due to the high genetic diversity and high rates of mutations in the genetic material, so far there has been no approved vaccine against HCV. Materials and Methods: The aim of this study was to determine conserved B- and T-cell epitopes of E1 and E2 proteins from HCV and to construction a chimeric peptide as a novel epitope-based vaccine for cross-protection against the virus. To this end, one B- and one T-cell epitope from both E1 and E2 which were predicted by EPMLR and Propred-1 server and had the highest score and antigenicity in VaxiJen 2.0 and PAP servers were selected for the construction of chimeric protein as a multi-epitope vaccine. Results: The results of this study showed that the chimeric peptide had a high antigenicity score and stability. Results also showed that most epitopes of E1 were located in two spectra consist of 45-65, 88-107 and 148-182 while the results of B-cell epitopes of E2 showed that this protein had fewer epitopes than E1. The epitopes predicted for E2 were located in (12-24 and 35-54) spectra. Conclusion: In conclusion, epitope-based vaccine which was designed by immunoinformatics methods could be considered as a novel and effective vaccine for cross-protection against HCV infection.