Insight Into Novel Anti-tuberculosis Vaccines by Using Immunoinformatics Approaches

Zafran Khan; Daniya Ualiyeva; Obed Boadi Amissah; Sanjeep Sapkota; H M Adnan Hameed; Tianyu Zhang

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.866873

Insight Into Novel Anti-tuberculosis Vaccines by Using Immunoinformatics Approaches

Front Microbiol. 2022 Jun 2:13:866873. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.866873. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zafran Khan^{1

2

3

4}, Daniya Ualiyeva^{2

5

6}, Obed Boadi Amissah^{1

2}, Sanjeep Sapkota^{1

2

3

4}, H M Adnan Hameed^{1

2

3

4}, Tianyu Zhang^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory of Respiratory Infectious Diseases, Guangzhou, China.
⁴ China-New Zealand Joint Laboratory on Biomedicine and Health, Guangzhou, China.
⁵ Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China.
⁶ Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease, has been a leading cause of morbidity and mortality for decades. The causative agent of TB is the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) which can infects various parts of the body, mainly the lungs in pulmonary TB cases. Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is the only approved vaccine for TB, but its efficiency to combat pulmonary TB is limited. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB and extensive drug-resistant (XDR) TB requires the evolution of more potent vaccines. Therefore, this research aims to generate a universal TB subunit vaccine using advanced immunoinformatics techniques. In generating a novel multiepitope subunit vaccine, we selected the conserved and experimentally confirmed antigens Rv0058, Rv0101, and Rv3343. After a rigorous evaluation, the top candidates from predicted Helper T-lymphocytes (HTL), Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL), and B-cell epitopes were considered potential vaccine candidates. Immunogenicity was enhanced by the addition of an adjuvant to the ultimate construct of the vaccine. B-cell epitopes predictions guaranteed the eventual induction of a humoral response. Thereafter, dynamics simulations and molecular docking validated the vaccine-receptor complex's stability and high affinity for the immune receptor TLR-3. Also, immune simulations revealed the significantly elevated levels of immunoglobulins such as IgM, cytokines such as interleukin-2, helper T (Th) cells, and cytotoxic T-cell populations. These results agreed with the actual inflammatory response and showed rapid antigen clearance after manifold exposure. Finally, the E. coli K12 strain was confirmed via in-silico cloning for quality expression. Nevertheless, in vivo experiments should be performed to validate the safety of the proposed vaccine and its inherent ability to prevent TB infection.

Keywords: Mycobacterium tuberculosis; drug resistance; immunoinformatics; therapeutic vaccine; tuberculosis.