AUTHOR=Gouda Ahmed M. , Soltan Mohamed A. , Abd-Elghany Khalid , Sileem Ashraf E. , Elnahas Hanan M. , Ateya Marwa Abdel-Monem , Elbatreek Mahmoud H. , Darwish Khaled M. , Bogari Hanin A. , Lashkar Manar O. , Aldurdunji Mohammed M. , Elhady Sameh S. , Ahmad Tarek A. , Said Ahmed Mohamed 

TITLE=Integration of immunoinformatics and cheminformatics to design and evaluate a multitope vaccine against Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa coinfection

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-biosciences/articles/10.3389/fmolb.2023.1123411

DOI=10.3389/fmolb.2023.1123411

ISSN=2296-889X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Introduction:</bold><italic>Klebsiella pneumoniae</italic> (<italic>K. pneumoniae</italic>) and <italic>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</italic> (<italic>P. aeruginosa</italic>) are the most common Gram-negative bacteria associated with pneumonia and coinfecting the same patient. Despite their high virulence, there is no effective vaccine against them.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> In the current study, the screening of several proteins from both pathogens highlighted FepA and OmpK35 for <italic>K. pneumonia</italic> in addition to HasR and OprF from <italic>P. aeruginosa</italic> as promising candidates for epitope mapping. Those four proteins were linked to form a multitope vaccine, that was formulated with a suitable adjuvant, and PADRE peptides to finalize the multitope vaccine construct. The final vaccine’s physicochemical features, antigenicity, toxicity, allergenicity, and solubility were evaluated for use in humans.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> The output of the computational analysis revealed that the designed multitope construct has passed these assessments with satisfactory scores where, as the last stage, we performed a molecular docking study between the potential vaccine construct and <italic>K. pneumonia</italic> associated immune receptors, TLR4 and TLR2, showing affinitive to both targets with preferentiality for the TLR4 receptor protein. Validation of the docking studies has proceeded through molecular dynamics simulation, which estimated a strong binding and supported the nomination of the designed vaccine as a putative solution for <italic>K. pneumoniae</italic> and <italic>P. aeruginosa</italic> coinfection. Here, we describe the approach for the design and assessment of our potential vaccine.</p>