Designing multi-epitope mRNA construct as a universal influenza vaccine candidate for future epidemic/pandemic preparedness

Despite the availability of prevention and treatment strategies and advancing immunization approaches, the influenza virus remains a global threat that continues to plague humanity with unpredictable pandemics. Due to the unusual genetic variability and segmented genome, the reassortment between different strains of influenza is facilitated and the viruses continuously evolve and adapt to the host cell's immunity. This underlies the seasonal vaccine mismatches that decrease the vaccine efficacy and increase the risk of outbreaks. Thus, the development of a universal vaccine covering all the influenza A and B strains would reduce the pervasiveness of the influenza virus. In the current study, a potentially universal influenza multi-epitope vaccine was designed based on the experimentally tested conserved T cell and B cell epitopes of hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), nucleoprotein (NP), and matrix-2 proton channel (M2) of the virus. The immune simulation and molecular docking of the vaccine construct with TLR2, TLR3, and TLR4 elicited the favorable immunogenicity of the vaccine and the formation of stable complexes, respectively. Ultimately, based on the immunoinformatics analysis, the universal mRNA multi-epitope vaccine designed in this study might have a protection potential against the various subtypes of influenza A and B.