In silico approach to Helicobacter pylori vaccine design

Helicobacter pylori, a Gram-negative microorganism, infects over half of the human population worldwide. Its extensive genetic variability and capacity to bypass host immune defences continue to impede the creation of an effective vaccine. Nonetheless, contemporary progress in computational biology and immunoinformatics has introduced innovative methodologies that can substantially support and accelerate vaccine design against this pathogen. In the present work, an in silico strategy was employed to develop a multi-epitope vaccine targeting H. pylori. The FlaA, UreB and PSA D15 proteins were chosen as primary antigens due to their strong immunogenic potential, critical roles in bacterial physiology, and comparatively low sequence variability among strains. Using advanced bioinformatics and immunoinformatics pipelines, potential epitopes for both B-cell and T-cell were identified and assembled through rational protein engineering approaches to generate the final vaccine construct. Before computational validation, the safety of the selected epitopes was predicted through toxicity, allergenticity, and non-homology to human analyses, which resulted on positive results. Furthermore, the construct's physicochemical parameters were under acceptable values, as for the population coverage. This construct was subsequently analysed through molecular docking simulations to evaluate its interaction with host immune receptors. The obtained results demonstrated that the designed molecule could accomplish stable interactions with high affinity with the immune components, supporting its potential as a viable candidate for experimental validation and subsequent development.