An immunoinformatics approach for the design of a multi-epitope subunit vaccine for urogenital schistosomiasis

Discovery of T and B memory cells capable of eliciting long-term immunity against schistosomiasisis is important for people in endemic areas. Changes in schistosomes environment due to developmental cycle, induces up-regulation of Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) which assist the parasite in coping with the hostile conditions associated with its life cycle. This study therefore focused on exploring the role of HSPs in urogenital schistosomiasis to develop new multi-epitope subunit vaccine against the disease using immunoinformatic approaches. The designed subunit vaccine was subjected to in silico antigenicity, immunogenicity, allergenicity and physicochemical parameters analysis. A 3D structure of the vaccine construct was predicted, followed by disulphide engineering for stability, codon adaptation and in silico cloning for proper expression and molecular protein-protein docking of vaccine construct in the vector against toll-like receptor 4 receptor, respectively. Consequently, a 493 amino acid multi-epitope vaccine construct of antigenicity probability of 0.91 was designed. This was predicted to be stable, non-allergenic in nature and safe for human use.