Detecting the Dominant T and B Epitopes of Klebsiella pneumoniae Ferric Enterobactin Protein (FepA) and Introducing a Single Epitopic Peptide as Vaccine Candidate

Abstract

Klebsiella pneumoniae causes various human infections. Ferric enterobactin protein (FepA) is a conserved protein of K. pneumoniae with high immunogenicity. In the present study, using comprehensive in silico approaches the T and B cell-specific epitopes of K. pneumoniae FepA were identified. The T (both class I and class II) and B (both linear and conformational) epitopes of FepA were predicted using prediction tools. The predicted epitopes were screened for human similarity, immunogenicity, antigenicity, allergenicity, toxicity, conservancy, structural and physicochemical suitability, and in case of T epitopes binding to HLA alleles, using numerous immune-informatics, homology modeling, and molecular docking approaches. These analyses led to introduce the most dominant FepA epitopes that are appropriate for vaccine development. Furthermore, we introduced an antigenic peptide containing both T and B epitopes which comprises suitable structural and physiochemical properties needed for vaccine development and it is conserved in many bacteria. Altogether, here the highly immunogenic T and B epitopes of FepA as well as a final epitopic peptide containing both T and B epitopes were found and introduced for future vaccine development studies. It is suggested that the actual efficiency and efficacy of our final epitopic peptide be investigated by in vitro/in vivo testing. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10989-021-10247-3.

Epitope mapping of Acinetobacter baumannii outer membrane protein W (OmpW) and laboratory study of an OmpW-derivative peptide

“…Both 9-mer class-I (CD8 + ) and 15-mer class–II (CD4 + ) T-cell epitopes of OmpW were predicted by three prediction applications namely SYFPEITHI ( http://www.syfpeithi.de/bin/MHCServer.dll/EpitopePrediction.htm [ 31 ]), IEDB ( http://tools.iedb.org [ 32 ], and ProPred-I ( https://webs.iiitd.edu.in/raghava/propred1/gloss.html ) or –II ( http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/propred/ ), [ 33 ]. The prediction was performed using 10 and 7 highly frequent MHC alleles of HLA-I and HLA-II, respectively as reported in our previous studies [ [34] , [35] , [36] ].…”

Finding epitopes of Klebsiella pneumoniae outer membrane protein-K17 (OMPK17) and introducing a 25-mer peptide of it as a vaccine candidate

“…Class-I (CD8 + T cell-specific) and class-II (CD4 + T cellspecific) T cell epitopes of OMPK17 were predicted using highly frequent human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles (HLA-I for class-I and HLA-II for class-II epitope prediction). These HLA alleles are highly frequent in the world population and have been previously used by us for epitope prediction of other K. pneumoniae antigens (Rostamian et al 2020;Zargaran et al 2021;Nemati Zargaran et al, 2021) (Table S1).…”

“…net/ ragha va/ abcpr ed/, (Saha and Raghava 2006)) was applied. The linear B cell epitope prediction was done as in our previous work (Zargaran et al 2021). Briefly, by using the tools' defaults parameters, the provided charts by each IEDB tool were compared and the epitopes that were predicted by at least three (out of seven) tools were selected.…”

Two peptides derivate from Acinetobacter baumannii outer membrane protein K as vaccine candidates: A comprehensive in silico study

“…The target population of the present vaccine study is the whole world because to somewhat A. baumannii is spread around the world. Considering this, the most frequent HLA-I (speci c for class-I or CD8+ T cell-speci c epitopes) and HLA-II (speci c for class-II or CD4+ T cell-speci c epitopes) alleles were determined using the Allele frequencies server (http://www.allelefrequencies.net/), the prediction servers, or using our previous experiences on K. pneumoniae antigens [12][13][14] (Table S1).…”