Identification of similar epitopes between severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 and Bacillus Calmette-Guérin: potential for cross-reactive adaptive immunity.

Objectives: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination has been implicated in protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and as a non-specific immunisation method against the virus. We therefore decided to investigate T-cell and B-cell epitopes within the BCG-Pasteur strain proteome for similarity to immunogenic peptides of SARS-CoV-2.

Methods: We used NetMHC 4.