Immunoinformatics Design of Multi-Epitope Peptide-Based Vaccine Against Schistosoma mansoni Using Transmembrane Proteins as a Target

Abstract

Schistosomiasis remains a serious health issue nowadays for an estimated one billion people in 79 countries around the world. Great efforts have been made to identify good vaccine candidates during the last decades, but only three molecules reached clinical trials so far. The reverse vaccinology approach has become an attractive option for vaccine design, especially regarding parasites like Schistosoma spp. that present limitations for culture maintenance. This strategy also has prompted the construction of multi-epitope based vaccines, with great immunological foreseen properties as well as being less prone to contamination, autoimmunity, and allergenic responses. Therefore, in this study we applied a robust immunoinformatics approach, targeting S. mansoni transmembrane proteins, in order to construct a chimeric antigen. Initially, the search for all hypothetical transmembrane proteins in GeneDB provided a total of 584 sequences. Using the PSORT II and CCTOP servers we reduced this to 37 plasma membrane proteins, from which extracellular domains were used for epitope prediction. Nineteen common MHC-I and MHC-II binding epitopes, from eight proteins, comprised the final multi-epitope construct, along with suitable adjuvants. The final chimeric multi-epitope vaccine was predicted as prone to induce B-cell and IFN-γ based immunity, as well as presented itself as stable and non-allergenic molecule. Finally, molecular docking and molecular dynamics foresee stable interactions between the putative antigen and the immune receptor TLR 4. Our results indicate that the multi-epitope vaccine might stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses and could be a potential vaccine candidate against schistosomiasis.

Molecular Characterization and Expression Analysis of the Gene Encoding 3-Hydroxyacyl-CoA Dehydrogenase (EGR-03347) from Echinococcus Granulosus and the Evaluation of the Immune Protection of the Definitive Hosts (dogs)

“…Multi epitope vaccines could induce a wide range of immune responses because of the presence of B cell and T cell epitopes. Therefore, the study of epitopes has played an important role in the construction of E. granulosus vaccines [16,17]. The results of the present study indicated that the amino acid sequence of EGR-03347 included 11 potential B cell linear epitopes, which suggested that EGR-03347 has great antigenic potential.…”

Integrated Core Proteomics, Subtractive Proteomics, and Immunoinformatics Investigation to Unveil a Potential Multi-Epitope Vaccine against Schistosomiasis

“…Although some multi-epitope vaccines against Schistosoma have been reported [ 104 , 121 , 122 ], the MEV developed in this work exhibits outstanding properties because it uses the core proteome of three Schistosoma species that primarily affects humans. As the constructed vaccine contains an adjuvant, B cell, and T cell epitopes (CTL, HTL), it can promote innate and adjuvant immunological reactions in the host body, making it an excellent and suitable candidate for Schistosoma vaccine production.…”

Identification of Immunodominant T-lymphocyte Epitope Peptides in HPV 1, 2 and 3 L1 Protein for Novel Cutaneous Wart Vaccine

“…The proposed recombinant polypeptide vaccine is the product of a peptide screening process combining both immunoinformatics and in vitro assays. In recent years, the fields of genomics and bioinformatics have evolved to enable computational screening of epitopes considering a diversity of HLAs [60]. The reliability of such methods can be increased by analyzing the results from multiple prediction tools.…”