Acute encephalitis syndrome outbreak has emerged as a major health concern on both national and international scales.
Brain inflammation/
infections caused by Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) can lead to death. The cases are growing in numbers globally, and this emergent health concern requires an effective and viable
vaccine to strengthen the body's immune system against this deadly virus. Proteomic analyses of JEV revealed the envelope
protein as a potential target for
vaccine development by patient samples analysis. Hence, in this study, we aimed to design a multiepitope
subunit vaccine for acute
encephalitis using the advanced structural biology and immunoinformatics approaches. We report the multiepitope
subunit vaccine consisted of the putative
T-cell epitope (MHC-1 and MHC-2 restricted) and
B-cell epitope and with high antigenicity and immunogenicity. The TAP affinity
epitopes along with adjuvants were engineered to the
vaccine, to ensure the ease transportation inside the host and elicitation of a strong immune response. The specificity of
vaccine construct was evaluated by molecular docking with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) receptors and host membrane
receptor TLR2. High docking scores and a close interaction to the binding groove of receptors confirmed the potency and specificity of the
vaccine. Also, molecular dynamics simulation studies confirmed the stable interaction of
vaccine with TLR2 for a long run (100 ns), which showed the prolonged elicitation of the strong immune response.
Peptide dynamics studies showed the flexible, strong, and stable binding of
vaccine with minimal deviation in root-mean-square deviation (RMSD), root-mean-square fluctuation (RMSF), and secondary structure estimation (SSE) plots till 100 ns simulation run. The in silico immune simulation approach based on the position-specific scoring matrix and machine learning methods resulted in the strong immune response reinforcement statistics of immune cells (T-cells, B-cells population, and memory cells) in response to
vaccine candidate. The favorable results and well-correlated data of varied in silico techniques paved for a potent multiepitope
vaccine and helped us to propose the mechanism of action of designed
vaccine and generation of the immune response against
acute encephalitis syndrome.