Reverse vaccinology and subtractive genomics approaches for identifying common therapeutics against Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis

• Published in: Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases
• Main Authors: Arun Kumar Jaiswal, Sandeep Tiwari, Syed Babar Jamal, Letícia de Castro Oliveira, Helioswilton Sales-Campos, Leonardo Eurípedes Andrade-Silva, Carlo Jose Freire Oliveira, Preetam Ghosh, Debmalya Barh, Vasco Azevedo, Siomar C. Soares, Virmondes Rodrigues Junior, Marcos Vinicius da Silva
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SciELO 2021
• Subjects: Mycobacterium leprae; Mycobacterium lepromatosis; Leprosy; Vaccine targets; Drug target identification; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Toxicology. Poisons; RA1190-1270; Zoology; QL1-991; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-9199-jvatitd-2020-0027; https://doaj.org/article/9672328ce65249bb8a0693fe10f829a6

Abstract Background Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis are gram-positive bacterial pathogens and the causative agents of leprosy in humans across the world. The elimination of leprosy cannot be achieved by multidrug therapy alone, and highlights the need for new tools and drugs to prevent the emergence of new resistant strains. Methods In this study, our contribution includes the prediction of vaccine targets and new putative drugs against leprosy, using reverse vaccinology and subtractive genomics. Six strains of Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis (4 and 2 strains, respectively) were used for comparison taking Mycobacterium leprae strain TN as the reference genome. Briefly, we used a combined reverse vaccinology and subtractive genomics approach. Results As a result, we identified 12 common putative antigenic proteins as vaccine targets and three common drug targets against Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Furthermore, the docking analysis using 28 natural compounds with three drug targets was done. Conclusions The bis-naphthoquinone compound Diospyrin (CID 308140) obtained from indigenous plant Diospyros spp. showed the most favored binding affinity against predicted drug targets, which can be a candidate therapeutic target in the future against leprosy.