An immunoinformatics approach for the design of a multi-epitope vaccine targeting lukD of Staphylococcus aureus

Background: S. aureus is the pathogen most frequently isolated from diabetes foot ulcer. These days,antibiotic-resident S.aureus is an active debate in science and clinical world. Today we can harnessimmunoinformatics tools with reverse vaccinology principles to design a multi epitope vaccine. In this studywe aim to design a vaccine against lukD and lukE, which are two of most frequent virulence factor of S.aureus in diabetes foot ulcer.Methods: The present study used immuno-informatics and computational approaches to identify both T-celland linear B-cell epitopes of the lukD virolance factor of S. aureus. The three-dimensional structure of thefinal vaccine protein and conformational B cell epitopes was predicted with online servers.Results: Among linear B-cell epitopes, "NITPKREKKVDD", "GDINISNGLSGGLN", and"NYKQESYRTTIDRKTNHK" were identified as highly antigenic. Among T-cell epitopes, "FQILTFNFI"(MHC class-I peptide) and "TSTYEVDWQNILLKL", "LNIFQILTFNFIKDK", "KLNIFQILTFNFIKD","NDKLNIFQILTFNFI", "NQNTVTFTSTYEVDW", "LGKSSVASSIALLLL" (MHC class-II peptide)displayed the highest population score, and was immensely antigenic and conserved. All selected epitopeswas non-allengen. We put these epitopes together with KK linker. Human Beta-defensin ۱ and PADREsequence were used as adjuvant. In vaccine tree dimensional structure, four conformational B-cell epitopewere detected.Conclusion: The present study identified several epitopes of the lukD virulence factor of S. aureus that arehighly antigenic and conserved.

Keywords:

S.aureus , Staphylococcus , T-cell epitopes , B-cell epitopes , bioinformatics , Computational approaches , Vaccine design