Identification of novel vaccine candidates against Acinetobacter baumannii using reverse vaccinology.
Acinetobacter baumannii (Ab) is a global emerging bacterium causing nosocomial infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, bacteremia and soft tissue infections especially in intensive care units. Since Ab is resistant to almost all conventional antibiotics, it is now one of the 6 top-priorities of the dangerous microorganisms listed by the Infectious Disease Society of America. The development of vaccine is one of the most promising and cost-effective strategies to prevent infections. In this study, we identified potential protective vaccine candidates using reverse vaccinology. We have analyzed 14 on-line available Ab genome sequences and found 2752 homologous core genes. Using information obtained from immuno-proteomic experiments, published proteomic information and the bioinformatics PSORTb v3.0 software to predict the location of extracellular and/or outer membrane proteins, 77 genes were identified and selected for further studies. After excluding those antigens have been used as vaccine candidates reported by the in silico search-engines of PubMed and Google Scholar, 13 proteins could potentially be vaccine candidates. We have selected and cloned the genes of 3 antigens that were further expressed and purified. These antigens were found to be highly immunogenic and conferred partial protection (60%) in a pneumonia animal model. The strategy described in the present study incorporates the advantages of reverse vaccinology, bioinformatics and immuno-proteomic platform technologies and is easy to perform to identify novel immunogens for multi-component vaccines development.
a Vaccine R&D Center; National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology ; National Health Research Institutes ; Zhunan Town , Taiwan.
Ming-Hsien
MH
Chiang
Wang-Chou
WC
Sung
Shu-Pei
SP
Lien
Ying-Zih
YZ
Chen
Annie Fei-yun
AF
Lo
Jui-Hsin
JH
Huang
Shu-Chen
SC
Kuo
Pele
P
Chong
D000151:Acinetobacter Infections / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control; D040981:Acinetobacter baumannii / Q000276:immunology*; D000818:Animals; D001428:Bacterial Vaccines / Q000276:immunology* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D011014:Pneumonia / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control
D001428:Bacterial Vaccines
Acinetobacter baumannii; bioinformatics; immuno-proteomic; multi-drug resistance; pneumonia; reverse vaccinology; vaccine