Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

February 5, 2020

Preliminary identification of potential vaccine targets for 2019-nCoV based on SARS-CoV immunological studies

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  • Using previously described similarities between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, Ahmed, et al. used SARS-CoV-derived experimentally-determined B- and T-cell epitope data to find epitopes in the S and N structural proteins of 2019-nCoV that were identical between the two viruses. 
  • Epitopes are parts of the virus “seen” by the immune system. By finding comparable sites across the two viruses, the researchers were hoping to leverage what is known about SARS-CoV immunogenicity to identify potential vaccine antigen candidates 
  • They found several sites where SARS-CoV epitopes mapped to 2019-nCoV proteins. The areas of the genes for the 2019-nCoV epitopes appeared stable (i.e., no reported mutations to date), making them good vaccine antigen candidates. 
  • Also, based on population coverage criteria for the T-cell epitopes (i.e., considering MHC allele distribution in populations to assess the percentage of individuals within a population likely to elicit an immune response to at least one T cell epitope from the set), use of these epitopes as a vaccine target could provide population coverage of 84% (China) or 94% (global) coverage.

Ahmed SF, et al. (Feb 4, 2020). Preliminary identification of potential vaccine targets for 2019-nCoV based on SARS-CoV immunological studies. Pre-Print downloaded on 5 Feb, 2020 from, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.03.933226v1