Identification of Drug and Vaccine Target in Mycobacterium leprae: A Reverse Vaccinology Approach

Mycobacterium leprae, an infectious agent of chronic infection so-called Leprosy. It is a prime healthconcern in various countries including India. India is currently running one of the extensive leprosy eradication programs in the globe, named as the National Leprosy Eradication Program (NLEP). Still, the situation is getting substandard because of the emergence of resistant strains. In the present study, newer approaches –like computational subtractive proteomics and reverse vaccinology has been applied in order to find out probable drug targets and vaccine candidates. The systematic workflow of the current study consists of a computational approach, where complete proteome of the bacteria is gradually reduced to find out few unique probable drug targets and reverse vaccinology, to find out probable vaccine antigens. Reverse vaccinology approach does not require a pathogen to be grown in the laboratory, encouraging its application to microorganisms that may not be easily cultivated like M. leprae but at least have an accessible genome sequence. This approach facilitates an easier and productive process ofantigen discovery. Results from the present study could facilitate selecting M. leprae proteins for drug design as well as vaccine production pipelines in the future.

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