Translational and structural vaccinomics approach to design a multi-epitope vaccine against NOL4 autologous antigen of small cell lung cancer

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is one of the most common cancers and it is the sixth common cause for cancer-related deaths. The high plasticity and metastasis have been a major challenge for humanity to treat the disease. Hence, a vaccine for SCLC has become an urgent need of the hour due to public health concern. Implementation of immunoinformatics technique is one of the best way to find a suitable vaccine candidate. Immunoinformatics tools can be used to overcome the limitations and difficulties of traditional vaccinological techniques. Multi-epitope cancer vaccines have become a next-generation technique in vaccinology which can be used to stimulate more potent immune response against a particular antigen by eliminating undesirable molecules. In this study, we used multiple computational and immunoinformatics approach to design a novel multi-epitope vaccine for small cell lung cancer. Nucleolar protein 4 (NOL4) is an autologous cancer-testis antigen overexpressed in SCLC cells. Seventy-five percent humoral immunity have been identified for this particular antigen. In this study, we mapped immunogenic cytotoxic T lymphocyte, helper T lymphocyte, and interferon-gamma epitopes present in NOL4 antigen and designed a multi-epitope-based vaccine using the predicted epitopes. The designed vaccine was antigenic, non-allergenic, and non-toxic with 100% applicability on human population. The chimeric vaccine construct showed stable and significant interaction with endosomal and plasmalemmal toll-like receptors in molecular docking and protein–peptide interaction analysis, thus assuring a strong potent immune response against the vaccine upon administration. Therefore, these preliminary results can be used to carry out further experimental investigations.