IN SILICO B-CELL AND T-CELL EPITOPE PREDICTION OF ASPERGILLUS FUMIGATUS FOR EPITOPE-BASED PEPTIDE VACCINE AGAINST ALLERGIC BRONCHOPULMONARY ASPERGILLOSIS

Abstract

Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) is a pulmonary fungal infection caused by an allergic reaction to the common mold, Aspergillus fumigatus. Predominantly, immunocompromised persons are more feasible to ABPA however ABPA can progress into a chronic state known as chronic pulmonary aspergillosis which is in ordinary non-immunocompromised persons. The prevalence of ABPA in adults who have severe asthma and cystic fibrosis with fungal sensitization is estimated at 1 million to 2.8 million cases in India. Consideration of vaccine formulation for the treating ABPA has not yet been made. Anti-fungal medication (like itraconazole) and corticosteroids could not emphasize satisfactory results due to high rates of acute morbidity and mortality. . Antifungal drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs like corticosteroids, anti IgE therapy and antibiotics are introduced in treatment of ABPA . There has been growing concern about Aspergillus species' resistance to the azole antifungals itraconazole, voriconazole, and posaconazole. The fact that acquired resistance has been reported in azole-naive persons and patients with invasive illness caused by A. fumigatus who had exposure to these drugs are particularly concerning. Invasive aspergillosis still has a startlingly high death rate despite improvements in antifungal treatments because of delayed diagnosis and the development of antifungal resistance Epitope-based peptide vaccine (EBPV), a type of subunit vaccine utilizes the epitopic regions of antigenic proteins. In ABPA, allergenic proteins are considered for EBPV. In this study, immunoinformatics are employed to investigate putative B-cell and T-cell epitopes against ABPA to the Aspergillus fumigatus. Primarily, allergenic proteins of A. fumigatus are extracted from the Allergen Nomenclature server. Obtains the protein sequences of allergens from the NCBI and UniPort databases. Eliminate those allergen proteins that possess cross-reactivity claimed by performing Blastp, restrict by Homo sapiens and mus musculus. B-cell and T-cell epitopes are identified by the Immune epitope database analysis resource (IEDB-AR) server. Epitope prediction and its characterization are performed by B-cell prediction tools. Correspondingly, T-cell epitope, 118KPLYYVVQANVEYSAD133 is interacting with the highest number of MHC-II alleles and population coverage is also significant. Protein-protein docking is performed between epitopes and their receptor. The lowest energy weighted score models are selected to visualize non-covalent interaction between docked clusters. Upon subsequent exploratory study, the recommended B cell and T cell epitopes could potentially be leveraged in peptide-based immunizations in the treatment of ABPA.