introduction of a novel poly-epitope vaccine against mycobacterium tuberculosis infection; an immunoinformatics approach

Background: tuberculosis isknownasoneof themostdangerous diseases causedbymycobacterium tuberculosis. although different strategies have been applied to prevent this disease, it is still considered a killer disease in the world. objectives: this project was conducted to design a novel poly-epitope vaccine based on three antigenic proteins against tuberculosis. methods: to design a poly-epitope vaccine, first, the antigenic proteins of mycobacterium tuberculosis, including dnak, fbpa, and katg were selected from the database. then, b cell, mhci, and mhcii epitopes of the antigenic proteins were predicted using reliable online tools. the best-predicted epitopes were applied to assemble a poly-epitope vaccine. the physicochemical features, the antigenicity of thewholevaccine, andthe protein structures of thedesigned poly-epitope vaccinewereevaluated by themostprecise tools. also, the coding dna sequence of the vaccine was adapted for expression in the prokaryotic system, then, it was theoretically cloned in pet32a (+) vector. results: the results revealed that the molecular weight and length of the designed poly-epitope vaccine were 32 kda and 308 amino acids, respectively. the protein structure results demonstrated that the designed poly-epitope vaccine contained 19.48% alpha-helix and 73.05% random coil. also, the results showed that 92.2% of amino acid residues were located in the favored region. finally, it was clarified that the antigenicity of the designed poly-epitope vaccine was 12333. conclusions: according to the results of the current project, it seems that the designed poly-epitope vaccine can be an appropriate candidate to control tuberculosis.