DESIGNING OF MULTI-EPITOPE VACCINE CONSTRUCT EMPLOYING IMMUNOINFORMATICS APPROACH TO COMBAT MULTI-TICK SPECIES INFESTATIONS

Ticks have an exceptional ability to parasitize diverse animal and human lives and cause direct losses by transmitting a wide variety of pathogens to their host. For the management of the tick a vaccine using mid-gut antigen, Bm86 was developed which provided a variable degree of efficacy against different strains of the cattle tick, Rhipicephalus microplus. Contrary to a single antigen-based vaccine, it is expedient to use multi-epitopes vaccine targeting multiple functions of ticks. To develop a universal tick vaccine against multi-species, multi epitopic construct using immunodominant conserved tick proteins with B and T-cell epitopes were designed employing various immuno-informatics techniques. The 3D structure of the final construct was predicted, refined, and validated by different computational techniques. Molecular docking of the construct was carried out with TLR-2 receptor to predict efficient cell mediate the immune response. The findings manifest that the multi-epitopic construct might be active against multi-tick species infestations, a problem faced by many tropical and subtropical countries.