Harnessing Bioinformatic Approaches to Design Novel Multi-epitope Subunit Vaccine Against Leishmania infantum

Kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the most important vector-borne protozoan disease and a life-threatening problem in the globe due to the lack of ideal vaccines or drugs. Recent advances in immunoinformatics and bioinformatics could be a promising approach in designing a new recombinant vaccine for VL treatment. In this study, a new recombinant vaccine against Leishmania infantum (L. infantum) designed by the computational method and Gp63, Hsp70 and Kmp11 antigens from L. infantum were selected as potential immunodominant epitopes. RpfE and RpfB from Mycobacterium tuberculosis used as adjuvants for enhancing vaccine immunogenicity. bioinformatic tools were used to analyze different aspects of the designed vaccine including, protein-protein interactions, B cell epitopes, MHC class I and II epitopes, the amino acid composition of multi-epitope vaccine, immunogenic behavior, and 3D homology modeling. This study revealed that our designed recombinant vaccine is able to induce responses of the immune system against L. infantum, and may be helpful to control VL infection, after appropriate in vitro and in vivo immunological assays.