Development of a candidate multi-epitope vaccine against Sphingobacterium spiritivorum : Reverse vaccinology and...

To develop a candidate vaccine aginst the Sphingobacterium spiritivorum.

Since there is currently no vaccine against this pathogen, we employed in-silico methods to extensively explore the outer membrane toxin-producing proteins found specifically in S. spiritivorum to forecast a multi-epitope chimeric vaccine design. This computational study was conducted in Saudi Arabia in 2022 (study design: computational; ethical approval not applicable).

TThe vaccine peptide comprises multiple linear and conformational B-cell epitopes, which have the potential to elicit humoral immunity. Projected B-cell- derived T-cell epitopes for outer membrane proteins are present in the produced protein. The docking and molecular dynamic simulation results indicating that the chimeric vaccine had adequate binding stability with TLR-4. Following the immunological simulation, significant levels of immune cell expression were observed as immunoglobulin (Ig) M and IgG, IgM, IgM1, and IgM2, and independently IgG1 and IgG2.

The developed vaccine candidate is suitable for further testing and can assist experimental vaccinologists in developing an effective vaccine against S. spiritivorum.