In-silico Studies Reveal Potential Epitope based Vaccine against M.leprae Phosphoglycerate Mutase Protein

Abstract

Leprosy is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae that mainly affects the skin, peripheral nerve, mucosa of the upper respiratory tract, and eyes. There is no vaccine designed specifically to prevent leprosy. The most common vaccine strategy is Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), however its efficacy is highly variable between studies. Current study utilized a computational method to predict antigenic epitopes from Mycobacterium leprae for peptide vaccine development. Molecular docking of top predicted peptides from 6 antigenic B-cell and 3 CTL epitopes were analyzed. These predicted antigenic epitopes might potentially be target peptides for future leprosy vaccines.