Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a gram-negative spiral bacterium that caused infections in half of the world’s population and had been identified as type I carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Compared with antibiotic treatment which could result in drug resistance, the vaccine therapy is becoming a promising immunotherapy option against H. pylori. Further, the multi-epitope vaccine could provoke a wider immune protection to control H. pylori infection. In this study, the in-silico immunogenicity calculations on 381 protein sequences of H. pylori were performed, and the immunogenicity of selected proteins with top-ranked score were tested. The B cell epitopes and T cell epitopes from three well performed proteins UreB, PLA1, and Omp6 were assembled into six constructs of multi-epitope vaccines with random orders. In order to select the optimal constructs, the stability of the vaccine structure and the exposure of B cell epitopes on the vaccine surface were evaluated based on structure prediction and solvent accessible surface area analysis. Finally Construct S1 was selected and molecular docking showed that it had the potential of binding TLR2, TLR4, and TLR9 to stimulate strong immune response. In particular, this study provides good suggestions for epitope assembly in the construction of multi-epitope vaccines and it may be helpful to control H. pylori infection in the future.

幽门螺杆菌( H. pylori ) 是一种革兰氏阴性螺旋菌，可导致全球一半人口感染，已被世界卫生组织确定为 I 型致癌物。与可能导致耐药性的抗生素治疗相比，疫苗疗法正在成为一种很有前景的针对幽门螺杆菌的免疫治疗选择。此外，多表位疫苗可以激发更广泛的免疫保护来控制幽门螺杆菌感染。在这项研究中，对 381 条幽门螺杆菌蛋白质序列的计算机免疫原性计算进行，并测试具有最高得分的选定蛋白质的免疫原性。来自三种表现良好的蛋白质 UreB、PLA1 和 Omp6 的 B 细胞表位和 T 细胞表位被组装成六个随机顺序的多表位疫苗构建体。为了选择最佳构建体，基于结构预测和溶剂可及表面积分析评估疫苗结构的稳定性和疫苗表面 B 细胞表位的暴露。最后选择了构建体S1，分子对接表明它具有结合TLR2、TLR4和TLR9的潜力，可以刺激强烈的免疫反应。特别是本研究为构建多表位疫苗的表位组装提供了很好的建议，可能有助于控制幽门螺杆菌。未来感染。