An immunoinformatics approach for the design of a multi-epitope subunit vaccine for urogenital schistosomiasis
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Date
2020-10-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PeerJ
Abstract
Discovery of T and B memory cells capable of eliciting long-term immunity against
schistosomiasisis is important for people in endemic areas. Changes in schistosomes
environment due to developmental cycle, induces up-regulation of Heat Shock
Proteins (HSPs) which assist the parasite in coping with the hostile conditions
associated with its life cycle. This study therefore focused on exploring the role of
HSPs in urogenital schistosomiasis to develop new multi-epitope subunit vaccine
against the disease using immunoinformatic approaches. The designed subunit
vaccine was subjected to in silico antigenicity, immunogenicity, allergenicity and
physicochemical parameters analysis. A 3D structure of the vaccine construct was
predicted, followed by disulphide engineering for stability, codon adaptation and in
silico cloning for proper expression and molecular protein–protein docking of
vaccine construct in the vector against toll-like receptor 4 receptor, respectively.
Consequently, a 493 amino acid multi-epitope vaccine construct of antigenicity
probability of 0.91 was designed. This was predicted to be stable, non-allergenic in
nature and safe for human use.
Description
Staff Publication
Keywords
Immunoinformatics,, Urogenital schistosomiasis,, Vaccine,, Heat shock protein,, Multi epitopes