Exploring Klebsiella pneumoniae capsule polysaccharide proteins to design multiepitope subunit vaccine to fight against pneumonia

ABSTRACT

Background

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an emerging human pathogen causing neonatal lung disease, catheter-associated infections, and nosocomial outbreaks with high fatality rates. Capsular polysaccharide (CPS) protein plays a major determinant in virulence and is considered as a promising target for vaccine development.

Research Design and Methods

In this study, we used immunoinformatic approaches to design a multi-peptide vaccine against K. pneumonia. The epitopes were selected through several immune filters, such as antigenicity, conservancy, nontoxicity, non-allergenicity, binding affinity to HLA alleles, overlapping epitopes, and peptides having common epitopes.

Results

Finally, a construct comprising 2 B-Cell, 8 CTL, 2 HTL epitopes, along with adjuvant, linkers was designed. Peptide-HLA interaction analysis showed strong binding of these epitopes with several common HLA molecules. The in silico immune simulation and population coverage analysis of the vaccine showed its potential to evoke strong immune responses.. Further, the interaction between vaccine and immune was evaluated by docking and simulation, revealing high affinity and complex stability. Codon adaptation and in silico cloning revealed higher expression of vaccine in E. coli K12 expression system.

Conclusions

Conclusively, the findings of the present study suggest that the designed novel multi-epitopic vaccine holds potential for further experimental validation against the pathogen.

KEYWORDS:

• Klebsiella pneumonia
• capsular polysaccharide
• epitope
• vaccine
• immunoinformatics

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge infrastructure support available through the DBT-BUILDER program (BT/INF/22/SP42155/2021) at KIIT Deemed to Be University, Bhubaneswar. We would like to thank Mr. Krishn Kumar Verma (Associate - Scientific Visualizer, KIIT-TBI) for his contribution in designing the graphical representation of figures.

Reviewer disclosures

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

Author contributions

Conception and design: J Dey, SR Mahapatra, N Misra, M Suar; Computational work: J Dey, SR Mahapatra; Data Analysis and Curation: S Lata, S Patro; Original Draft Preparation: J Dey, SR Mahapatra, N Misra; Writing- Reviewing and Editing: N Misra, M Suar. The manuscript has been read and approved by all authors.

Declaration of Interests

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 materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.