Research Article Identification of B and T Cell Epitopes to Design an Epitope- Based Peptide Vaccine against the Cell Surface Binding Protein of Monkeypox Virus: An Immunoinformatics Study Lincon Mazumder , Md. Rakibul Hasan , Kanij Fatema , Shamima Begum, Abul Kalam Azad , and Mohammad Ariful Islam Department of Microbiology, Jagannath University, Dhaka 1100, Bangladesh Correspondence should be addressed to Mohammad Ariful Islam; ariful@mib.jnu.ac.bd Received 15 September 2022; Revised 7 January 2023; Accepted 7 February 2023; Published 22 February 2023 Academic Editor: Srinivasa Reddy Bonam Copyright © 2023 Lincon Mazumder et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. Although the monkeypox virus-associated illness was previously confined to Africa, recently, it has started to spread across the globe and become a significant threat to human lives. Hence, this study was designed to identify the B and T cell epitopes and develop an epitope-based peptide vaccine against this virus’s cell surface binding protein through an in silico approach to combat monkeypox-associated diseases. Results. The analysis revealed that the cell surface binding protein of the monkeypox virus contains 30 B cell and 19 T cell epitopes within the given parameter. Among the T cell epitopes, epitope “ILFLMSQRY” was found to be one of the most potential peptide vaccine candidates. The docking analysis revealed an excellent binding affinity of this epitope with the human receptor HLA-B * 15:01 with a very low binding energy (-7.5 kcal/mol). Conclusion. The outcome of this research will aid the development of a T cell epitope-based peptide vaccine, and the discovered B and T cell epitopes will facilitate the creation of other epitope and multi-epitope-based vaccines in the future. This research will also serve as a basis for further in vitro and in vivo analysis to develop a vaccine that is effective against the monkeypox virus. 1. Introduction While millions of deaths were reported worldwide due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic [1], a new zoonotic disease, mon- keypox (mPox), caused by the monkeypox virus (MPV), has become a severe public health concern. The monkeypox virus, closely related to the variola virus that causes small- pox, was initially identified in monkeys in 1958 [2] and in humans in a forested area of central Africa in 1970 [3, 4]. While mPox is endemic in parts of west and central Africa, its recent occurrence in a number of nonendemic locations outside of Africa has caused public health officials to express grave concerns [5]. Since smallpox was eradicated due to widespread vaccination, there have been very few natural outbreaks of the Orthopoxvirus until recently [2]. However, after the confirmed outbreaks in over 70 countries where the virus has not been reported before, the World Health Orga- nization on July 23 issued its highest level alert, designating mPox as a public health emergency of international concern. The MPV belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus and in the family Poxviridae [2]. Currently, two variants of mPox in human are widely known. The Central African or Congo Basin variant (clade I) of mPox, which has a fatality rate of up to 10%, is the more severe of the two forms of mPox that affect humans [6]. In contrast, the West African variant (clade II), responsible for the current outbreak, causes a less severe disease with a lower mortality rate of 3% or less [4, 7]. The mPox can be transmitted among the community through a number of methods. The nosocomial and home routes of mPox transmission between people are extensively known, while sexual contact has also been proposed as a potential means of transmission [8, 9]. The disease can spread from one person to another if they are in close prox- imity to an infected individual’s skin sores, contaminated Hindawi Journal of Immunology Research Volume 2023, Article ID 2274415, 14 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/2274415