Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a life-threatening virus that causes liver infection. If it is not detected in an early phase, the virus can lead to severe liver damages, including hepatic fibrosis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Today, computational design of the HCV diagnostic kit is employed to increase the specificity and sensitivity of the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) diagnosis method according to the specific genotypes of the virus in each geographical region as well as to reduce costs in developing and low-income countries. The aim of this study was to design a multi-epitope protein from common HCV genotypes in Iran (1a, 1b, and 3a). For this purpose, potential immunodominant epitopes and highly antigenic regions were identified for six antigenic proteins and all of the segments were joined using a proper linker. The physico-chemical characteristics of the designed multi-epitope protein were evaluated and tertiary structures of the construct were modeled. Then, the models were evaluated and the best one was determined. Finally, the sequence of the protein was reverse-translated and optimized for high expression in E. coli expression host. The findings of the present study indicated that the designed construct could detect the common HCV genotypes in Iran with high sensitivity and specificity.

丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）是威胁生命的病毒，可引起肝脏感染。如果在早期阶段未检测到病毒，则该病毒会导致严重的肝损害，包括肝纤维化，肝硬化和肝细胞癌。如今，HCV诊断试剂盒的计算设计被用于根据每个地理区域中病毒的特定基因型来提高ELISA（酶联免疫吸附测定）诊断方法的特异性和敏感性，并降低开发和生产成本。低收入国家。这项研究的目的是从伊朗（1a，1b和3a）常见的HCV基因型设计一种多表位蛋白。为此，鉴定了六个抗原蛋白的潜在免疫优势表位和高度抗原性区域，并使用适当的接头将所有片段连接在一起。评价了设计的多表位蛋白的物理化学特性，并对构建体的三级结构进行了建模。然后，评估模型并确定最佳模型。最后，该蛋白的序列被反向翻译并优化以用于高表达。大肠杆菌表达宿主。本研究的结果表明，设计的构建体可以高灵敏度和特异性地检测伊朗常见的HCV基因型。