Abordagem racional de imunoinformática para o desenvolvimento de candidatos vacinais multiepítopos do SARS-CoV-2 e Mpox vírus

Abstract

Emerging and re-emerging diseases symbolize a growing threat to global health, influenced by factors such as globalization, climate change and human interactions with animals. The COVID-19 pandemic is a recent example that highlights the growing threat of these diseases to global public health, emphasizing the need for effective strategies to deal with zoonotic diseases, such as the recent re-emerging outbreak of monkeypox. Vaccination is one of the most effective approaches to protecting against infectious diseases. However, vaccine development is a complex and time-consuming procedure, but it can be optimized using reverse vaccinology, which uses in silico techniques to identify and choose antigens. Therefore, the objective of this work was to develop potential vaccine candidates for COVID-19 and monkeypox. The work is structured into two chapters, with the first addressing the construction of chimeric proteins using epitopes from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the second on the construction of a chimeric protein with epitopes obtained through an immunoinformatics approach for the Mpox virus. The proteins demonstrated safety, antigenicity and absence of potential allergenic risks. Furthermore, through molecular protection simulations, it was proven that these proteins are capable of interacting with immune system receptors, and immunological simulations indicated the ability to trigger significant immune responses. Although the results are promising, additional in vitro and in vivo testing is needed to consolidate and validate these findings before advancing to human clinical trials. In this way, this work contributes to the understanding and potential combat of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, highlighting the importance of reverse vaccinology as an agile and promising approach in vaccine development.