In silico Identification of Potential Peptides or Allergen Shot Candidates Against Aspergillus fumigatus

Abstract

Aspergillus fumigatus is capable of causing invasive aspergillosis or acute bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, and the current situation is alarming. There are no vaccine or allergen shots available for Aspergillus-induced allergies. Thus, a novel approach in designing of an effective vaccine or allergen shot candidate against A. fumigatus is needed. Using immunoinformatics approaches from the characterized A. fumigatus allergens, we have mapped epitopic regions to predict potential peptides that elicit both Aspergillus-specific T cells and B cell immune response. Experimentally derived immunodominant allergens were retrieved from . A total of 23 allergenic proteins of A. fumigatus were retrieved. Out of 23 allergenic proteins, 13 of them showed high sequence similarity to both human and mouse counterparts and thus were eliminated from analysis due to possible cross-reactivity. Remaining allergens were subjected to T cell (major histocompatibility complex class I and II alleles) and B cell epitope prediction using immune epitope database analysis resource. Only five allergens have shown a common B and T cell epitopic region between human and mouse. They are Asp f1 {147–156 region (RVIYTYPNKV); Mitogillin}, Asp f2 {5–19 region (LRLAVLLPLAAPLVA); Hypothetical protein}, Asp f5 {305–322 region (LNNYRPSSSSLSFKY); Metalloprotease}, Asp f17 {98–106 region (AANAGGTVY); Hypothetical protein}, and Asp f34 {74–82 region (YIQDGSLYL); PhiA cell wall protein}. The epitopic region from these five allergenic proteins showed potential for development of single peptide- or multipeptide-based vaccine or allergen shots for experimental prioritization.

In Silico Designing of a Multitope Vaccine against Rhizopus microsporus with Potential Activity against Other Mucormycosis Causing Fungi

“…Furthermore, epitope mapping via immunoinformatics tools will exclude the non-antigenic regions of protein candidates, where only epitopes that stimulate B and T cells would be selected for the vaccine design, which would give a more potent immune response [ 77 ]. The approach of designing and validating a vaccine through a computational approach has been applied against many fungi such as Aspergillus fumigatus [ 78 ], Candida auris [ 79 ], and Candida albicans [ 18 ]. This approach had been validated with wet-lab experiments, and immunized mice were protected from fatal candidiasis [ 80 ].…”

Advances in Fungal Peptide Vaccines

“…In silico assays, such as the use of artificial neural networks and immune epitope databases, facilitate the prediction of B cell epitopes and T cell MHC epitopes [119][120][121]. Subjecting A. fumigatus allergens to such analyses resulted in the identification of five potential allergic proteins (Asp f1, Asp f2, Asp f5, Asp f17, and Asp f34) with common B and T cell epitopes for both mice and humans [59]. Hence, these five proteins with high affinity binding to MHC class I or II epitopes could be used to characterize constituent peptides and develop vaccine candidates for invasive Aspergillus infections or therapeutics for allergy immunotherapy for chronic allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis.…”

Molecular Insights Into Development and Virulence Determinants of Aspergilli: A Proteomic Perspective

“…Germination of Aspergilli conidia is the key step for the establishment of successful invasion or infection in human host. Knowledge on proteins from germinating conidia of Aspergilli will expedite the advancement in diagnosis, vaccine development, and/or drug target identification against Aspergilli associated infections (Thakur and Shankar, 2016b ; Tiwari et al, 2016 ). Different studies were carried out on germinating conidia of different Aspergillus species.…”