Epitope-based Peptide Vaccine Against Fructose-bisphosphate Aldolase (FBA) of Madurella mycetomatis Using Immunoinformatics Approaches.

Mycetoma is a distinct flesh eating and destructive neglected tropical disease. It is endemic inmany tropical and subtropical countries. Mycetoma caused by bacterial infections (actinomycetoma) such asStreptomycessomaliensis and Nocardiae or true fungi (eumycetoma) such as M.mycetomatis. To date, treatments fail to cure the infection and the available marketed drugs are expensive and toxic uponprolonged usage. Moreover, no vaccine was prepared yet against mycetoma. The aim of this study is to predict effective epitope-based vaccine against fructose-bisphosphate aldolaseenzymes of M. mycetomatis using immunoinformatic approaches. Materials and Methods: Fructose-bisphosphate aldolase of M.mycetomatis Sequence was retrieved fromNCBI. Different prediction tools were used to analyze the nominee's epitopes in Immune Epitope Databasefor B-cell, T-cell MHC class II & I. Then the proposed peptides were docked using Autodock 4.0 softwareprogram. Results and Conclusions: The proposed and promising peptides KYLQ show a potent bindingaffinity to Bcell,FEYARKHAF with a very strong binding affinity to MHC1 alleles and FFKEHGVPL thatshow a verystrong binding affinity to MHC11and MHC1 alleles. This indicates a strong potential toformulate a newvaccine, especially with the peptide FFKEHGVPL that is likely to be the first proposed epitope-basedvaccine against Fructose-bisphosphate aldolase of M.mycetomatis. This study recommends an in-vivoassessment for the most promising peptides especially FFKEHGVPL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]