Nipah virus (NiV) is an emerging zoonotic pathogen of global concern, causing serious life-threatening illness in humans. The first outbreak was reported from Malaysia in 1998. The virus is classified under the family Paramyxoviridae. Geographically, the deadly virus is known to be distributed in Southeast Asia. Its recent emergence in Kerala, India, indicates its public health emergency and necessitates the urgent proactive measures for the development of a safe and effective vaccine for the prevention and control of the disease. As a single-stranded RNA virus, there is no effective antiviral or vaccine available to fight this virus. Attempt on the development of vaccines had been hampered due to the highly infectious nature of the virus and the requirement of specialised bio-containment facility to handle the pathogen. Considering the potential advantages of reverse vaccinology approaches, the present study attempted to predict vaccine candidates targeting NiV virus genes encoding non-structural and structural proteins (specifically glycoprotein G, glycoprotein F, and W protein) circulating in Southeast Asia. The results of the analysis have suggested two potential vaccine candidates based on various parameters such as antigenicity, immunogenicity, non-toxicity, and non-allergenicity. In view of the global interest on urgent requirement of an effective vaccine, the present study predicted candidate vaccine antigens using bioinformatic tools and their promising usefulness as candidate peptides along with ongoing vaccine discovery efforts has been discussed.
Pariyapurath et al. (Wed,) studied this question.