Identification and design of a multi-epitope subunit vaccine against the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus epidermidis: An immunoinformatics approach

Abstract

Staphylococcus epidermidis is one of the major causes of nosocomial infections around the globe that leads to a high rate of mortality and morbidity in both immunocompromised patients and preterm infants. Despite the alarming increase in multi-drug resistance, no promising vaccines are readily available against this pathogen. Thus, the present study is focused on designing a multi-epitope subunit vaccine using five antigenic proteins of S. epidermidis through an immunoinformatics approach. The final vaccine comprised B-cell, HTL, and CTL binding epitopes followed by Lipoprotein LprA adjuvant added at N-terminal to augment the immunogenicity. Physicochemical assessment of the vaccine reveals the antigenic and non-allergic nature. The vaccine structure was designed, refined, validated, and disulfide engineered to obtain the best model. Molecular docking and dynamics simulation of the proposed vaccine with toll-like receptors (TLR-2 and TLR-4) showed strong and stable interactions. MM-PBSA analysis was implemented as an efficient tool to determine the intermolecular binding free energies of the system. The vaccine was subjected to immune simulation to predict its immunogenic profile. In silico cloning suggested that the proposed vaccine can be expressed efficiently in E.coli. Furthermore, in vivo animal experiment is needed to determine the effectiveness of the in silico designed vaccine.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• S. epidermidis
• immunoinformatics
• multi-epitope
• molecular dynamics
• MM-PBSA

Acknowledgements

RK thanks the Centre for Bioinformatics, Pondicherry University for providing the facilities to carry out the research work, and GS thank RGNF (Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship) for purse his Ph.D. degree. Guneswar S also thanks Avinash Kant Lakra for his valuable suggestions to the work.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Authors’ contributions

The protocol of this study was designed by GS, RK. The docking and simulation study was performed by GS. The methodology was performed by GS, RPV, and RK. The manuscript was written by GS, RPV, and RK.