Reverse Vaccinology: An Approach for Identifying Leptospiral Vaccine Candidates

Abstract

Leptospirosis is a major public health problem with an incidence of over one million human cases each year. It is a globally distributed, zoonotic disease and is associated with significant economic losses in farm animals. Leptospirosis is caused by pathogenic Leptospira spp. that can infect a wide range of domestic and wild animals. Given the inability to control the cycle of transmission among animals and humans, there is an urgent demand for a new vaccine. Inactivated whole-cell vaccines (bacterins) are routinely used in livestock and domestic animals, however, protection is serovar-restricted and short-term only. To overcome these limitations, efforts have focused on the development of recombinant vaccines, with partial success. Reverse vaccinology (RV) has been successfully applied to many infectious diseases. A growing number of leptospiral genome sequences are now available in public databases, providing an opportunity to search for prospective vaccine antigens using RV. Several promising leptospiral antigens were identified using this approach, although only a few have been characterized and evaluated in animal models. In this review, we summarize the use of RV for leptospirosis and discuss the need for potential improvements for the successful development of a new vaccine towards reducing the burden of human and animal leptospirosis.

Translationally Controlled Tumor ProteinTCTPas Peptide Vaccine againstSchistosoma japonicum: an Immunoinformatics Approach

“…Recently, immunoinformatics approach has been accepted as a universal tool in the field of vaccine development. This method can help in the prediction of appropriate epitopes for designing an efficacious epitope-based peptide vaccine, and offers high degree of confidence for the prediction of epitopes, as an epitope selection is a critical step in the design of an epitope-based peptide vaccine (32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37). Our present study is the first study using in silico approach to predict all possible B and T cell epitopes from Schistosoma japonicum TCTP protein.…”

Comparative screening of recombinant antigen thermostability for improved leptospirosis vaccine design

“…bacteria and have a high potential for severe side effects (Adler, ; Grassmann, Souza, & McBride, ). Proteins displayed on the leptospiral surface during host infection provide an optimal target for recombinant vaccines (Chang et al, ; Dellagostin et al, ; Lessa‐Aquino et al, ). Currently, antigens derived from Leptospira immunoglobulin‐like (Lig) proteins are the most promising vaccine candidates but concerns about formulation consistency have hampered development (Conrad et al, ; Evangelista, Lourdault, Matsunaga, & Haake, ; Palaniappan et al, ; Santos & Nascimento, ; Yan et al, ).…”

DNA nanovaccines prepared using LemA antigen protect Golden Syrian hamsters against Leptospira lethal infection

“…Newgeneration vaccines have been proposed and evaluated against leptospirosis; these include subunit, genetic immunisation (DNA), and vectored vaccines. (1,2,3) LemA is a putative lipoprotein that was identified using a reverse vaccinology approach. (4) This protein presents an M3 epitope similar to Listeria and is conserved among the pathogenic Leptospira spp., and protects immunised hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) when administered as a subunit (50.0-87.5%), DNA vaccine (62.5%), and prime-boost strategy (87.5%).…”