Exploring membrane proteins of Leishmania major to design a new multi-epitope vaccine using immunoinformatics...

Leishmaniasis is one of the major global endemic diseases. Among all the different forms of the disease, cutaneous Leishmaniasis has the highest prevalence worldwide. Treatment with current drugs has not had a significant effect on the improvement of the disease. An attempt to replace an appropriate vaccine that can stimulate host cellular immunity and induce the response of Major histocompatibility complex I (MHCI) and Major histocompatibility complex II (MHCII) against Leishmania is essential. Vaccine production remains a challenge despite the use of different antigens for vaccination against Leishmania major. Hence, we were used the immunoinformatics approach to design a new multi-epitope vaccine against L. major using immunogenic outer membrane proteins. Helper T-lymphocyte (HTL) and Cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes were predicted and for final confirmation of the selected epitopes, docking analysis, and molecular dynamics simulation was performed. Then, GDGDG linker and profilin adjuvant were added to enhance the immunity of vaccines. The designed vaccine was evaluated in terms of molecular weight, PI, immunogenicity, and allergenicity. Moreover, the secondary and three-dimensional structure of the final construct was identified. In silico cloning approach was carried out to improve expression of the vaccine construct. Finally, molecular docking, followed by molecular dynamic was performed to determine the interaction between multi-epitope vaccine and TLR11. We hope that the designed vaccine can be a good candidate for the development of cutaneous leishmaniasis vaccine. but its effectiveness should be assessed in vivo.