[Bioinformatics-based Design of Peptide Vaccine Candidates Targeting Spike Protein of MERS-CoV and Immunity analysis in Mice].

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was identified as a novel human coronavirus and posed great threat to public health world wide,which calls for the development of effective and safe vaccine urgently. In the study, peptide epitopes tagrgeting spike antigen were predicted based on bioinformatics methods. Nine polypeptides with high scores were synthesized and linked to keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH). Female BALB/C mice were immunized with individual polypeptide-KLH, and the total IgG was detected by ELISA as well as the cellular mediated immunity (CMI) was analyzed using ELIs-pot assay. The results showed that an individual peptide of YVDVGPDSVKSACIEVDIQQTFFDKTWPRPIDVSKADGI could induce the highest level of total IgG as well as CMI (high frequency of IFN-γ secretion) against MERS-CoV antigen in mice. Our study identified a promising peptide vaccine candidate against MERS-CoV and provided an experimental support for bioinformatics-based design of peptide vaccine.