In silico Analysis of CadF epitope- based vaccine design against Campylobacter jejuni

Abstract Background To eradicate infectious diseases caused by microorganisms, vaccination is a popular strategy against them and can be an effective approach. Among vaccines, subunit vaccines have been used to be more effective against diseases. CadF protein of Campylobacter jejuni is one of the important antigens in the pathogenic process of the bacterium. So, the aim of this work was to do a bioinformatics study for the identification of epitope-based CadF vaccine, as a subunit vaccine. Main body CadF gene sequences were extracted from the NCBI database and suitable physic-chemical properties of CadF were evaluated by Protprom server. Some epitopes of the CadF protein with high affinity were detected by different servers, which were predicted based on MHC-peptide complex and B-cell epitopes. The results indicated that CadF is an antigenic and non-allergenic protein and provided a desirable structure for design vaccine. Among epitopes, LSDSLALRL was confirmed for the simulation of both of B and T cells. This 9-mers peptide was located in 135-143 sequences of CadF protein and interacted with HLA-A0101. The peptide isn’t allergen and has the ability to be an antigen for motivating immune system. Besides, the analysis implied that the epitope structure could allow designing a vaccine against C. jejuni.