Epitopes- Based Vaccine Design Against Foot and Mouth Disease <i>SAT2</i> Serotype from Sudanese Isolate by Using Immunoinformatic Approaches

Abstract Foot and mouth disease (FMD) has been endemic in Sudan for decades and causes continuous outbreaks that have a direct negative impact on the animal population and prevent the exportation of animals from the country. The high diversity of FMD serotypes, especially SAT2 and A serotypes, hinders the development of effective vaccines since the most important component of vaccination is the degree of cross-protection provided by the vaccine against currently circulating field viruses. An immunoinformatic approach was utilized to predict a multi-epitope peptide vaccine design against the SAT2 serotype from a Sudanese isolate targeting virus capsid region P1 . The virus capsid region P1 comprises the major immunogenic epitopes that confer protection against the FMD virus. Two predicted T-cell epitopes were identified that showed high binding affinity with MHC1 alleles ( VQRSRQSTL and YHAEWDTGL ) and high conservation with SAT2 African serotypes and were located within the VP1 and VP3 proteins, respectively. Only one epitope was predicted for B cells ( LPATPEDAAH ), which scored above the threshold in Bepipred linear epitope, Emini surface accessibility, and Kolaskar and Tongaonkar antigenicity and is located in VP3 protein. Molecular docking of the peptides ( VQRSRQSTL and YHAEWDTGL ) with the MHC1 allele showed satisfactory interaction with the binding sites of BoLA-HD6 using UCSF chimera 1.13.1 software. The peptide VQRSRQSTL showed remarkable hydrophobic interaction with the BoLA-HD6 allele, which was superior to the other peptides. This study is the first to propose a peptide vaccine against FMD SAT2 serotypes from a Sudanese isolate.