Epitope-based vaccine design for tuberculosis hiv infection through in silico approach

Background and Objective: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading causes of HIV-related death among people living with it. TB occurs more often severe in a weakened immune system, particularly when a patient is infected with HIV. People infected with HIV are 15-22 times more likely to fall ill with TB. In this research, an epitope-based vaccine has been specially designed for people living with HIV, since the current tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) has been proven to cause more harm than good in treating patients suffering from poor immune systems. Materials andMethods: The epitopes were selected from polysaccharide-protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and protein envelope of the Human immunodeficiency virus. B cell epitopes have been predicted using BepiPred 2.0, while T cell epitopes predicted using SMM, both are provided by Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). Results: This research had designed vaccine combinations for each type of epitopes and types of the pathogen with world population coverage of >85% for MHC class I epitopes and >99% for MHC class II epitopes. Conclusion: With each epitope were selected based on how strong its bond with HLA and how many HLA can bind with it. As this research was done through in silico approach, in vivo test is still needed to guarantee the result of the designed vaccine.