A Computational Reverse Vaccinology Approach for the Design and Development of Multi-Epitopic Vaccine Against Avian Pathogen.

Abstract

Avian mycoplasma is a bacterial disease causing chronic respiratory disease (CRD) in poultry industries with high economic losses. The eradication of this disease still remains as a challenge. A multi-epitope prophylactic vaccine aiming the antigenic proteins ofcan be a capable candidate to eradicate this infection. The present study is focused to design a multi-epitope vaccine candidate consisting of cytotoxic T-cellCTL), helper T-cell (HTL), and B-cell epitopes of antigenic proteins, using immunoinformatics strategies. The multi-epitopic vaccine was designed, and its tertiary model was predcited, which was further refined and validated by computational tools. After initial validation, molecular docking was performed between multi-epitope vaccine construct and chicken TLR-2 and 5 receptors, which predicted effective binding. Theresults specify the structural stability, precise specificity, and immunogenic response of the designed multi-epitope vaccine, and it could be an appropriate vaccine candidate for theinfection.