Browsing by Author "FIZZA ASIF"

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    In-silico designing of a multi-epitope vaccine construct against proteus vulgaris infections
    (UMT Lahore, 2022) FIZZA ASIF; NIMRA AFZAL; MUHAMMAD FAIZAN SAJID; ZUFA MUBARIZ
    Proteus vulgaris is a Gram-negative bacterium belonging to the Enterobacteriaceae family and is commonly associated with hospital-acquired infections, particularly urinary tract infections (UTIs). With the rising antimicrobial resistance of P. vulgaris, vaccine development represents a promising strategy to prevent future nosocomial outbreaks. Currently, no approved vaccine exists for P. vulgaris. In this study, a multi-epitope vaccine (MEV) was designed using an immunoinformatics approach, targeting highly conserved regions of immunogenic bacterial proteins to map T-cell (class I and II) and B-cell epitopes. After assessing allergenicity, antigenicity, toxicity, and other immunogenic properties using online tools including AllerTOP, Vaxijen, ToxinPred, and IEDB, a total of 18 epitopes were selected for the vaccine construct. These epitopes demonstrated broad population coverage (82.47%) and strong binding affinity with HLA alleles (IC50 < 50 nM). The selected epitopes were fused with suitable linkers and adjuvants, and the physicochemical properties, secondary structure, and tertiary structure of the MEV were predicted. Molecular docking analyses of the construct with HLA alleles (HLA-A02:06, HLA-DRB101:01) and toll-like receptors (TLR-2, TLR-4, TLR-5) revealed significant binding affinities. Immune simulations using C-ImmSim showed that a single injection of 1000 vaccine proteins could elicit robust innate, humoral, and cell-mediated immune responses. Furthermore, the MEV construct was successfully in-silico cloned into the pET28a (+) vector using SnapGene. The proposed vaccine shows potential for preventing P. vulgaris infections and may be effective against other Proteus species. Future studies involving molecular dynamics simulations and wet-lab validation are warranted.