| Summary: | Whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the gram-negative bacterium Bordetella pertussis, which was first reported more than a century ago. Recent data indicate that the reoccurrence of this disease is linked to bacterial resistance against the immune system's defense mechanisms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines. Therefore, the development of new and efficient vaccines and medications is urgently required. This study employed an immunoinformatics approach to identify potential vaccine targets from the proteome of B. pertussis strain NC_018518.1, aiming to create a multi-epitope subunit vaccine against B. pertussis. Following immunization steps, suitable extracellular and outer-membrane proteins with a peptide signal were carefully selected. To construct a multi-epitope vaccine, proteins involved in pathogenicity but not found in human hosts were chosen. T and B cell epitopes were extracted from these selected proteins and screened using various immunoinformatics tools. The epitopes commonly predicted by multiple servers were added to the candidate list based on their immunogenicity, antigenicity, and toxicity analysis. The candidate vaccine was then designed by incorporating an appropriate linker, adjuvant, and graft with the selected epitopes. Various bioinformatics tools were employed to evaluate the antigenicity, allergenicity, solubility, and physicochemical properties of the candidate vaccine. The prediction of its secondary and tertiary structures and subsequent validation steps were conducted. Our findings demonstrate that the candidate vaccine elicits both humoral and cell-mediated immune responses, suggesting its potential as a pertussis vaccine. However, further experimental validation is necessary to fully assess the proposed vaccine's potential.
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