Prediction of T and B Cell Epitopes in the Proteome of SARS-CoV-2 for Potential Use in Diagnostics and Vaccine Design

The world is currently battling the Covid-19 pandemic for which there is no therapy available. Prophylactic measures like vaccines can effectively thwart the disease burden. The current methods of detection are PCR based and require skilled manpower to operate. The availability of cheap and ready to use diagnostics like serological methods can ease the detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the current study, immunoinformatics tools have been used to predict T and B cell epitopes present in all the proteins of this virus. NetMHCPan, NetCTL and NetMHCII servers were used for T cell epitope prediction while BepiPred and ABCPred were used for B cell epitope prediction. Population coverage analysis for T cell epitopes revealed that these could provide protection to the people throughout world. The T cell epitopes can exclusively used for vaccine design whereas B cell epitopes can be used for both vaccine design and developing diagnostic kits.