New putative vaccine candidates against Acinetobacter baumannii using the reverse vaccinology method

Infections caused by multi-drug resistance Acinetobacter baumannii are increasing worldwide. Discovery of the vaccine against this bacterium as a cost-effective and preventive strategy seems necessary. This study has introduced 11 new putative vaccine candidates against A. baumannii using the reverse vaccinology method. We considered 33 genomes of A. baumannii strains and selected the outer membrane and secreted proteins as putative vaccine candidates using Vaxign web tool. Finally, 11 proteins were confirmed as promising vaccine candidates. These targets belonged to proteins involved in cell division (NlpD), fimbria or pili assembly (FimA, PapC, and PapC associated with usher system), iron acquisition (FhuA, BfnH, FatA-like protein, and IutA), DcaP-like protein and two novel hypothetical proteins (HP-1 and HP-2). The analysis of linear and conformational B-cell epitopes showed that the outer membrane proteins including DcaP-like protein and HP-2 had high conserved surface-exposed epitopes that they can consider as excellent putative vaccine targets in the upcoming immunological assays.