Immunoinformatics Approach for Designing an Epitope-Based Peptide Vaccine against Treponema pallidum Outer Membrane Beta-Barrel Protein

Abstract

Treponema pallidum is a gram negative bacteria and the main cause of syphilis which is classified as chronic inflammatory discompose antecedent transmitted sexually. Syphilis affects the central nervous system and the cardiovascular system, potentially leading to hearing or visual loss, aortic aneurism, stroke-like syndrome, dementia and paralysis. T. pallidum has the ability to stimulate adaptive immune and corresponding innate procedures in tissue and blood that might set the era for the HIV’s bidirectional transmission. This study expects a real epitope-based vaccine against β-Barrel outer membrane protein of Treponema pallidum designed by immunoinformatics approaches. The sequences were saved from NCBI and a number of prediction tests were undertaken to explore possible epitopes for B-cell, T-cell MHC class I and II. 3D structure of the most hopeful epitopes was illustrated. Two epitopes showed high binding affinity for B-cells, while five epitopes showed high binding affinity for MHCI and MHCII. The results were hopeful to formulate a vaccine with 71.88% world population coverage. We expect that these hopeful epitopes helps as a preventive formula for the disease in the future and recommend further in vitro and in vivo studies