Development of a novel multi-epitope vaccine against Ureaplasma urealyticum infection through reverse vaccinology approach

Abstract

Ureaplasma urealyticum (U. urealyticum) is a sexually transmitted pathogen often causing urogenital tract disorders. The growing challenge of multidrug-resistant strains poses a significant risk for the treatment of U. urealyticum infections. To date, no licensed vaccines are available, and previous attempts to create secure and efficient prophylaxis have been failed. Recent studies have adopted an immunoinformatic strategy based on reverse vaccinology to detect antigenic proteins which are appropriate for the creation of a multi-epitope vaccine. The multi-epitope subunit vaccine, incorporating eleven T-cell and seven B-cell epitopes along with the adjuvant, exhibited strong antigenicity and did not induce allergic responses. Moreover, molecular docking as well as dynamic simulations were utilized to investigate the interaction within the vaccine-adjuvant complex. The prospective effectiveness of the vaccine was verified via immune simulation experiments. Therefore, the vaccine developed in this study represents an effective multi-epitope solution for immunization against U. urealyticum, waiting for further experimental analysis.

Keywords: Ureaplasma urealyticum; Immune simulation; Immunoinformatic; Molecular docking; Molecular dynamics simulation; Reverse vaccinology; Subtractive proteomics.