Preliminary Identification of Potential Vaccine Targets for the COVID-19 Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Based on SARS-CoV Immunological Studies
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Abstract
The beginning of 2020 has seen the emergence of COVID-19 outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). There is an imminent need to better understand this new virus and to develop ways to control its spread. In this study, we sought to gain insights for vaccine design against SARS-CoV-2 by considering the high genetic similarity between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, which caused the outbreak in 2003, and leveraging existing immunological studies of SARS-CoV. By screening the experimentally-determined SARS-CoV-derived B cell and T cell epitopes in the immunogenic structural proteins of SARS-CoV, we identified a set of B cell and T cell epitopes derived from the spike (S) and nucleocapsid (N) proteins that map identically to SARS-CoV-2 proteins. As no mutation has been observed in these identified epitopes among the 120 available SARS-CoV-2 sequences (as of 21 February 2020), immune targeting of these epitopes may potentially offer protection against this novel virus. For the T cell epitopes, we performed a population coverage analysis of the associated MHC alleles and proposed a set of epitopes that is estimated to provide broad coverage globally, as well as in China. Our findings provide a screened set of epitopes that can help guide experimental efforts towards the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.03.933226: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources However, for brevity and to be consistent with the terminology used in the ViPR database, we will not make this qualification, and will simply refer to them as epitopes in this study. ViPRsuggested: (vipR, RRID:SCR_010685)This tool uses the distribution of MHC alleles (with at least 4-digit resolution, e.g., A*02:01) within a defined population (obtained from http://www.allelefrequencies.net/) to estimate the population coverage for a set of T cell epitopes. http://www.allelefrequencies.net/suggested: (Allele Frequencies in Worldwide Populations, RRID:SCR_007259)Constructing the … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.02.03.933226: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources However, for brevity and to be consistent with the terminology used in the ViPR database, we will not make this qualification, and will simply refer to them as epitopes in this study. ViPRsuggested: (vipR, RRID:SCR_010685)This tool uses the distribution of MHC alleles (with at least 4-digit resolution, e.g., A*02:01) within a defined population (obtained from http://www.allelefrequencies.net/) to estimate the population coverage for a set of T cell epitopes. http://www.allelefrequencies.net/suggested: (Allele Frequencies in Worldwide Populations, RRID:SCR_007259)Constructing the phylogenetic tree: We used the publicly available software PASTA v1.6.4 [28] to construct a maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree of each structural protein using the unique set of sequences in the available data of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. PASTAsuggested: (PASTA, RRID:SCR_008770)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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