Bioinformatics analysis for the purpose of designing a novel multi-epitope DNA vaccine against <i>Leishmania major</i>

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is one of the main infectious diseases worldwide. In the midst of all the different forms of the disease, Cutaneous Leishmania (CL) has the highest incidence in the world. Many trial vaccines have been developed with the purpose of generating long-term cell-mediated immunity to Leishmania(L) major. As there is not any multi-epitope DNA vaccine with high efficacy against L.major, the aim of this study is to design a new multi-epitope DNA vaccine in order to have effective control upon this infectious disease through the immune bioinformatics. The L.major antigens: Gp63, LACK, TSA, LmSTI1and KMP11 were selected to design a multi-epitope DNA vaccine. The initial structure of the DNA vaccine was designed, benefiting from Gen Bank's website information. Epitopes of MHC-I antigens were predicted through the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), and the selected epitopes were used to make vaccines construct along with linkers. New multi-epitope vaccine including 459 nucleic acids designed, and inserted between BamH1 and HindIII restriction sites of pCDNA3.1 mammalian expression vector. 12 epitopes among the chosen antigens were selected by two servers (IEDB and ANTIGEN). They had high stability and high antigenic power. Physicochemical features of vaccine measured by ProtParam server, and this structure was thermostable and hydrophilic. it's a suitable model to study on the animal and human phases. The designed vaccine is expected to be an effective candidate through development of (CL) vaccines. However, the effectiveness of this vaccine should also evaluate in vivo model.