Developing a multi-epitope vaccine candidate to combat porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and porcine deltacoronavirus co-infection by employing an immunoinformatics approach

Coinfection of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) and porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is common in pig farms, but there is currently no effective vaccine to prevent this co-infection. In this study, we used immunoinformatics tools to design a multi-epitope vaccine against PEDV and PDCoV co-infection. The epitopes were screened through a filtering pipeline comprised of antigenic, immunogenic, toxic, and allergenic properties. A new multi-epitope vaccine named , comprising cytotoxic T lymphocyte-, helper T lymphocyte-, and B cell epitopes, was constructed. To enhance immunogenicity, the TLR2 agonist Pam2Cys and the TLR4 agonist RS09 were added to . Molecular docking and dynamics simulation were performed to reveal the stable interactions between and TLR2 as well as TLR4. Additionally, the immune stimulation prediction indicated that could stimulate T and B lymphocytes to induce a robust immune response. Finally, to ensure the expression of the vaccine protein, the sequence of was optimized and further performed cloning. These studies suggest that has the potential to be a vaccine candidate against PEDV and PDCoV co-infection as well as a new strategy for interrupting the spread of both viruses.