immunoinformatics evaluation of a fusion protein composed of leishmania infantum lihyv and phlebotomus kandelakii apyrase as a vaccine candidate against visceral leishmaniasis

Background: visceral leishmaniasis (vl) is a lethal parasitic disease, transmitted by sand fly vectors. immunomodulatory properties of sand fly saliva proteins and their protective effects against leishmania infection in pre-exposed animals suggest that a combination of an antigenic salivary protein along with a leishmania antigen can be considered for designing a vaccine against leishmaniasismethods: three different fusion forms of l. infantum hypothetical protein (lihyv) in combination with phlebotomus kandelakii salivary apyrase (pkanap) were subjected to in-silico analyses. major histocompatibility complex (mhc) class i and ii epitopes in both humans and balb/c mice were predicted. antigenicity, immunogenicity, epitope conservancy, toxicity, and population coverage were also evaluated. results: highly antigenic promiscuous epitopes consisting of truncated lihyv (10-285) and full-length pkanap (21-329) were identified in human and was named model 1. this model contained 25 mhc-i and 141 mhc-ii antigenic peptides which among them, mpansdiri and aqslfdfsglaldsn were fully conserved. laldsnatv, rcssalvsi, alvsinvpl, savesgalf of mhc-i epitopes, and 28 mhc-ii binding epitopes showed 60% conservancy among various clades. a population coverage with a rate of >75% in the iranian population and >70% in the whole world was also identified.conclusion: based on this in-silico approach, the predicted model 1 could potentially be used as a vaccine candidate against vl.