Mina Mirzaee - Faculty of Biological Sciences and Technology Shahid Beheshti University
Seyed Masoud Hosseini - Faculty of Biological Sciences and Technology Shahid Beheshti University
Behrokh Farahmand - Department of Influenza and Common Respiratory Viruses, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran
Fatemeh Foutoohi - Department of Influenza and Common Respiratory Viruses, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran
Golnaz Bahramali - Department of Influenza and Common Respiratory Viruses, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

Background and Aim : Influenza is a virus of the Orthomyxoviridae family whose genome issingle-stranded RNA with negative polarity. Members of this virus include influenza type A, Band C. .The purpose of this study is to design a multi-epitope vaccine candidate protein structurebased on hemagglutinin protein against influenza A virusMethods : First, the hemagglutinin protein sequence of influenza A strain (A/reassortant/X-۴۷(Victoria/۳/۱۹۷۵ x Puerto Rico/۸/۱۹۳۴) (H۳N۲)) was extracted from the UniProt database. Andby using IEDB server, epitope prediction was done based on cellular and humoral immunity,H۲-Kd, H۲-Ld, H۲-Dd, H۲-IEd, H۲-IAd alleles in mice were considered to predict cellular immunity.For all predicted epitopes, antigenicity, toxicity and conservancy parameters were checked withVaxiJen, ToxinPred and Epitope conservancy analysis tools for epitopes, respectively. Finally,two epitopes with the best characteristics were selected for humoral and cellular immunity.Epitopes were joined together with GPGPG and EAAAK linkers. After checking the allergenicitywith the AllerCatPro tool, the final sequences were modeled with the I-TASSER server andValidation of the model was done with PSVS and ProSA-web tools. Physicochemical propertieswere analyzed with ProtParam tool and post-translational modifications with MusiteDeep tool forthe final model. To evaluate the immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate model, TLR۷ wasdocked with HDOCK toolResults : Multiple screenings of epitopes obtained from predictions led to the identification of twolinear humoral epitopes that also exhibit structural features. Also, both epitopes selected based oncellular immunity had a high score. All four epitopes had over ۹۰% conservation. The threedimensionalstructure of the vaccine candidate had a good modeling score. The molecular dockingstudy between the vaccine candidate protein and TLR۷ showed a high docking scoreConclusion : Influenza virus epidemics and pandemics cause many diseases and deaths aroundthe world. The use of vaccines with multi-epitope platform provides the potential and providinghigh immunity against all antigenic changes of the virus. In this study, the designed candidatevaccine has shown promising results, and it is suggested that laboratory and animal analyzes beconsidered for further investigation

Influenza A, multi-epitope vaccine, epitope prediction, conservancy