An immunoinformatics approach to epitope-based vaccine design against PspA in Streptococcus pneumoniae

摘要: BackgroundStreptococcus pneumoniae (SPN) is the agent responsible for causing respiratory diseases, including pneumonia, which causes severe health hazards and child deaths globally. Antibiotics are used to treat SPN as a first-line treatment, but nowadays, SPN is showing resistance to several antibiotics. A vaccine can overcome this global problem by preventing this deadly pathogen. The conventional methods of wet-laboratory vaccine design and development are an intense, lengthy, and costly procedure. In contrast, epitope-based in silico vaccine designing can save time, money, and energy. In this study, pneumococcal surface protein A (PspA), one of the major virulence factors of SPN, is used to design a multi-epitope vaccine.MethodsFor designing the vaccine, the sequence of PspA was retrieved, and then, phylogenetic analysis was performed. Several CTL epitopes, HTL epitopes, and LBL epitopes …