A multiepitope vaccine against bovine tuberculosis designed using immunoinformatics

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a severe infectious disease that affects both domesticated and wild animals and has a negative impact on both public health and the global economy. The causative organism of the disease is Mycobacterium bovis and, sporadically, other pathogenic mycobacteria. The issue of bTB is made more challenging when the infection is linked to multi-drug resistant M. bovis. In the current investigation, immunoinformatics approach has been applied to design a multiepitope peptide-based vaccine, MBOVAC1.0. Based on an initial screening of 3805 proteins, we selected three vital proteins viz., PPE family protein, ESAT-6 and Serine Threonine Protein Kinase for designing the multi-epitope vaccine candidate. The candidate vaccine elicited strong expression in Escherichia coli following codon optimization and in silico cloning. Immunological simulation result indicated release of immune molecules by CD4 + and CD8 + T-lymphocytes and antibodies by B-lymphocytes ensuring in high level of both cell mediated and humoral immunity against the pathogen. The proposed vaccine candidate was found to yield encouraging results in terms of safety, stability, antigenicity and immunogenicity; so, it should be validated by wet lab experiments to assess its efficacy in neutralising bTB.