Peer Review #1 of "Epitope-based chimeric peptide vaccine design against S, M and E proteins of SARS-CoV-2, the etiologic agent of COVID-19 pandemic: an in silico approach (v0.1)"

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a public health emergency of international concern declared by the World Health Organization (WHO).An immunoinformatics approach along with comparative genomic was applied to design a multiepitope-based peptide vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 combining the antigenic epitopes of the S, M and E proteins.The tertiary structure was predicted, refined and validated using advanced bioinformatics tools.The candidate vaccine showed an average of ≥ 90.0% world population coverage for different ethnic groups.Molecular docking and dynamics simulation of the chimeric vaccine peptide with the immune receptors (TLR3 and TLR4) predicted efficient binding.Immune simulation predicted significant primary immune response with increased IgM and secondary immune response with high…