Reverse engineering approach: a step towards a new era of vaccinology with special reference to Salmonella

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Salmonella is responsible for causing enteric fever, septicemia, and gastroenteritis in humans. Due to high disease burden and emergence of multi- and extensively drug-resistant Salmonella strains, it is becoming difficult to treat the infection with existing battery of antibiotics as we are not able to discover newer antibiotics at the same pace at which the pathogens are acquiring resistance. Though vaccines against Salmonella are available commercially, they have limited efficacy. Advancements in genome sequencing technologies and immunoinformatics approaches have solved the problem significantly by giving rise to a new era of vaccine designing, i.e. ‘Reverse engineering.’ Reverse engineering/vaccinology has expedited the vaccine identification process. Using this approach, multiple potential proteins/epitopes can be identified and constructed as a single entity to tackle enteric fever.

Areas covered

This review provides details of reverse engineering approach and discusses various protein and epitope-based vaccine candidates identified using this approach against typhoidal Salmonella.

Expert opinion

Reverse engineering approach holds great promise for developing strategies to tackle the pathogen(s) by overcoming the limitations posed by existing vaccines. Progressive advancements in the arena of reverse vaccinology, structural biology, and systems biology combined with an improved understanding of host–pathogen interactions are essential components to design new-generation vaccines.

KEYWORDS:

• Enteric fever
• pangenome reverse vaccinology
• reverse vaccinology 2.0
• Salmonella Paratyphi
• Salmonella Typhi
• structural vaccinology

Article highlights

• Vaccination is one of the most effective means of tackling silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance.

• Reverse vaccinology is being employed for the rapid discovery of novel vaccine antigens in the case of Salmonellae.

• Structural and systems biology combined with an improved understanding of host–pathogen interaction are essential components to come up with effective vaccine candidates.

• Reverse vaccinology 2.0 has the potential to revolutionize vaccine development.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or material discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or mending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

SV and RT have equally contributed in performing the literature review, conceptualizing, and writing the present article. PR devised the structure, checked, and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by DST-PURSE grant provided to Panjab University (PR). The authors also acknowledge the financial support provided to the authors (ICMR-SRF provided to SV and DST-INSPIRE to RT).