Multi Epitope Based Peptide Vaccine against Marek’s Disease Virus Serotype 1 Glycoprotein H and B

Background: Marek’s disease (MD) is a highly contagious disease of chickens caused by Marek’s disease virus (MDV). It causes economic losses in poultry industry estimated to be more than 1 billion per year. The aim of this study was to design a peptide vaccine against Marek’s disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1) by targeting the Glycoproteins H and B as an immunogens to stimulate protective immune response. A total of 43 Glycoprotein H and 33 glycoprotein B of Gallid alphaherpesvirus 2 (MDV-1) were retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information database (NCBI) in the 13th of October 2017. Several tests at Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) were used to detect the highly conserved immunogenic epitopes that elicit B and T cells and could be used as efficient vaccine candidates. In our results three epitopes from glycoprotein H namely; 91-FYKRPVSKLL-100, 255-LKPYEPVDKF-264, and 684-PRPL-687 and three epitopes of glycoprotein B; 162- EKQV-165, 234-YGLSPPE-240, and 363-YNDSHVK-369 were fulfilled the criteria of surface accessibility, antigenicity for becoming the most probable B cell epitope. While Four epitopes of glycoprotein H; 425-YVLRSAYAF-433, 175-LTSELTGTY-183, 476-LYYAFASIF-484, and 367-MITETLSTF-375 were addressed as potentially promising epitopes as they bound the highest number of both MHC-I and MHC-II alleles with a high binding affinity to chickens MHC-I molecule (BF2*2101) haplotype in the structural level. Also two epitopes of glycoprotein B; 598-FLFGSGYAL-606, 727-FMSNPFGAL-735 were bound with the highest number of both MHC-I and MHC-II with high binding affinity. Taken together Marek’s disease is a significant disease of poultry. We addressed epitopes from glycoprotein H and B that could act as candidates’ vaccine. To our knowledge there is no in silico epitope based vaccine for Marek’s disease virus serotype 1 (MDV-1). An in vitro and in vivo application is required to prove the efficacy of the predicted epitopes as peptide vaccine.