Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025363 (Poster 045) | Published: 01 Aug 2025
Abubakar Ojone Woziri1,2,&, Paul Habila Mamman1, Khadijah Sulaiman Ukashah3, Emmanuel Oluwadare Balogun2,4, Anyebe Bernard Onoja5, Oladipo Elijah Kolawole6
1Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 2Africa Centre of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology (ACENTDFB), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 3Department of Nursing, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Shika, Nigeria, 4Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Life Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 5Department of Virology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria, 6Department of Microbiology, Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State, Nigeria
&Corresponding author: Abubakar Ojone Woziri, Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Email: woziriabubakar@gmail.com
Received: 10 Apr 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 01 Aug 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Lassa Virus, Epitopes, DNA, Vaccine, in-silico, Cloning
©Abubakar Ojone Woziri et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Abubakar Ojone Woziri et al., Design and in-silico evaluation of a novel multiepitope-based recombinant DNA vaccine candidate against Lassa hemorrhagic fever. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00189. https://doi.org/10.37432/jieph-confpro5-00189
Emerging and re-emerging infectious pathogens are major threats to global public health. With the continued rise in the number of annual reported cases in Nigeria, the genomic diversity of the virus, as well as the expanding geography and species distribution of its reservoir hosts, Lassa fever has become a foremost endemic neglected zoonosis in Nigeria, with no available vaccine for its prevention globally. The present study aimed to develop a cross protective, multiepitope-based recombinant DNA Vaccine against Lassa Virus strains circulating in Nigeria.
Several Multiple humoral and cell-mediated epitopes were mapped from each consensus sequences of a total of 69 glycoprotein and 67 nucleoprotein sequences of the Lassa virus (LASV) strains across lineage I, II, III and VI circulating in Nigeria and characterized using high-throughput in silico bioinformatics tools to construct a putative LASV vaccine candidate, and the constructed candidate was evaluated in silico for its structural and physicochemical properties.
A total of 4, 10 and 3 CTL, HTL and linear B-cell non-toxic, non-allergenic and highly antigenic epitopes, respectively, were mapped and used for the construction of the vaccine candidate. The chimeric LASV vaccine had good expression levels in procaryotic and eucaryotic cells, was thermostable, hydrophobic, non-allergenic, non-toxigenic and highly antigenic. Also, the putative candidate elicited both humoral and cell-mediated immune response, in addition to its induction of interferon gamma after a prime and boost dose-regime. Furthermore, the putative vaccine candidate was able to adapt to the codon usage of E. coli and Cavia porcellus (Guinea Pig), and successfully cloned in pVAX1 vector.
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