Epitopic analysis of Potential Vaccine Candidate in Leishmania infantum for Development of Human Vaccine

Leishmaniasis is a poverty related disease caused by protozoan parasites belonging to the genus Leishmania. No effective vaccine is presently available to treat this disease. The present study identifies specific epitopes in highly antigenic peptides of Leishmania infantum. Interestingly we found amastin like surface proteins as relevant markers for vaccine development for design of epitopes. A major glycoprotein GP63 leishmanolysin which directly binds to human natural killer cells (NK cells) was also selected as highly antigenic and considered for the analysis. Overall two different amastin like surface proteins were found as relevant for designing 9-mer epitopes for vaccine development against L. infantum and the best identified antigenic segments interacted with at least 8 alleles of each MHC classes. These epitopes are potential candidates to induce both T cell and B cell mediated immune responses.