Design of multi-epitope vaccine candidate against Brucella type IV secretion system (T4SS)

Brucellosis is a common zoonosis, which is caused by Brucella infection, and Brucella often infects livestock, leading to abortion and infertility. At present, human brucellosis remains one of the major public health problems in China. According to previous research, most areas in northwest China, including Xinjiang, Tibet, and other regions, are severely affected by Brucella. Although there are vaccines against animal Brucellosis, the effect is often poor. In addition, there is no corresponding vaccine for human Brucellosis infection. Therefore, a new strategy for early prevention and treatment of Brucella is needed. A multi-epitope vaccine should be developed. In this study, we identified the antigenic epitopes of the Brucella type IV secretion system VirB8 and Virb10 using an immunoinformatics approach, and screened out 2 cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes, 9 helper T lymphocyte (HTL) epitopes, 6 linear B cell epitopes, and 6 conformational B cell epitopes. These advantageous epitopes are spliced together through different linkers to construct a multi-epitope vaccine. The silico tests showed that the multi-epitope vaccine was non-allergenic and had a strong interaction with TLR4 molecular docking. In immune simulation results, the vaccine construct may be useful in helping brucellosis patients to initiate cellular and humoral immunity. Overall, our findings indicated that the multi-epitope vaccine construct has a high-quality structure and suitable characteristics, which may provide a theoretical basis for the development of a Brucella vaccine.