Application of Reverse Vaccinology in Designing a Vaccine for Malaria

Malaria is a life-threatening disease and a major public health problem in Nigeria. According to the latest WHO estimates, there about 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 with an uncertainty range of 154 million to 289 million) and an estimated 660,000 deaths mostly among African children. To date, there is no vaccine and the parasites are becoming resistant to available drugs, this necessitates the need for the identification vaccine candidates. Pharmacoproteomic and computational biology represent an attractive alternative approach for the identification of common drug target and peptide-vaccine candidates in the pathogen. Vaccine designing is shifted from entire pathogen or whole antigen to peptide or epitope based-vaccines that are specific, safe and easy to produce. Subtractive genomic approach was used to identify non-human homologous outer membrane proteins in P. falciparum. Four hypothetical proteins were identified based on Vaxijen score and exo-membrane topology, used to produce both B-cell and T-cell mediated immunity. Propred and propred1 were used to predict promiscuos helper T-Lymphocytes (HTL), Cytotoxic T-Lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes and MHCPred for their binding affinity. Three T-cell epitopes derived from identified B-cells bind to maximum number of MHC class I and class II alleles and specifically bind to HLA alleles such as DRB1*0101 and DRB1*0401. The epitopes are LLNNNMLGS, FSVTTNITI and FNVQYAAQL show high potential to induce both B-cell and T-cell mediated immune responses. These predicted epitopes (small peptide) might be promising candidates for vaccine design against malaria. Experimental validation is required.