Exploring Leptospiral proteomes to identify potential candidates for vaccine design against Leptospirosis using an immunoinformatics approach

Abstract

Leptospirosis is the most widespread zoonotic disease, estimated to cause severe infection in more than one million people each year, particularly in developing countries of tropical areas. Several factors such as variable and nonspecific clinical manifestation, existence of large number of serovars and asymptomatic hosts spreading infection, poor sanitation and lack of an effective vaccine make prophylaxis difficult. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop an effective vaccine to halt its spread all over the world. In this study, an immunoinformatics approach was employed to identify the most vital and effective immunogenic protein from the proteome of Leptospira interrogans serovar Copenhageni strain L1-130 that may be suitable to stimulate a significant immune response aiding in the development of peptide vaccine against leptospirosis. Both B-cell and T-cell (Helper T-lymphocyte (HTL) and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)) epitopes were predicted for the conserved and most immunogenic outer membrane lipoprotein. Further, the binding interaction of CTL epitopes with Major Histocompatibility Complex class I (MHC-I) was evaluated using docking techniques. A Molecular Dynamics Simulation study was also performed to evaluate the stability of the resulting epitope-MHC-I complexes. Overall, this study provides novel vaccine candidates and may prompt further development of vaccines against leptospirosis.

A live attenuated-vaccine model confers cross-protective immunity against different species of the Leptospira genus

“…Lately, studies have shown that a chimeric approach has the potential for an effective universal vaccine against leptospirosis ( Lin et al, 2016 ; Santos and Nascimento, 2018 ). Other than Ligs and LipL32, LipL41 has been tested as a vaccine candidate without success ( Ko et al, 2009 ) and LIC20172 and LIC11966 have been identified and tested, respectively, as promising candidates for subunit vaccine ( Lata et al, 2018 ; Oliveira et al, 2018 ). More recently, a DNA vaccine delivering two leptospiral proteins (RecA and FliD) has shown promising results including high survival rates, sterilizing immunity and heterologous protection, although tested only among two different L. interrogans strains ( Raja et al, 2018 ).…”

A Live Attenuated Vaccine Model Confers Cross-Protective Immunity Against Different Species ofLeptospiraspp.

“…Lately, studies have shown that a chimeric approach has the potential for an effective universal vaccine against leptospirosis 41,42 . Other than Ligs and LipL32, LipL41 has been tested as a vaccine candidate without success 2 and LIC20172 and LIC11966 have been identified and tested, respectively, as promising candidates for subunit vaccine 43,44 . More recently, a DNA vaccine delivering two leptospiral proteins (RecA and FliD) has shown promising results including high survival rates, sterilizing immunity and heterologous protection, although tested only among two different L. interrogans strains 45 .…”

Design and expression of polytopic construct of cathepsin-L1, SAP-2 and FhTP16.5 proteins of Fasciola hepatica

“…Finding information about the prediction of antigenic epitopes using immunoinformatic tools has become an important issue for the early diagnosis of the disease, enhancement of the specificity of diagnostic method and production of vaccines (Ali et al , 2017; Adhikari et al , 2018; Lata et al , 2018). Such methods can improve the quality of epitope characterization and are precise, accurate, effective, economical and simple.…”