Clinical Microbiology: Open Access

Mycobacterial RD antigens as diagnostic and vaccine candidates

4^th International Conference on Clinical Microbiology and Microbial Genomics

October 05-07, 2015 Philadelphia, USA

Indu Verma

Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, India

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Clin Microbiol

Abstract:

The currently available diagnostic tools and BCG vaccine for tuberculosis are not adequate. There is an urgent need to identify the novel candidate antigens for specific and early diagnosis as well as effective vaccine. Analysis of virulent Mycobacteriun tuberculosis genome has shown the presence of regions of deletion (RD) that are deleted in BCG vaccine and till now 16 such regions (RD1-RD16) have been identified. The immune dominant RD proteins seem to be the ideal candidates for diagnostic and vaccine tools particularly due to absence of many of these from BCG vaccine and environmental mycobacterium. Earlier we have shown the antibodies to four RD antigens in the patients of pulmonary tuberculosis. Epitope mapping of these antigens lead to identification of four immune dominant peptides and antibodies to these peptides were detected in the sera of specifically TB patients not in a closely mimicking disease Sarcoidosis. To identify additional such B�??cell epitopes, RD1-RD16 proteins were subjected to bio-informatic analysis and the epitopes from cell surface expressed RD proteins have been identified to be further used for the development of diagnostic assay. The predicted MHC binding T-cell epitopes of RD proteins were also screened in TB patients and healthy household contacts and a combination of three selected peptides has been investigated for its immunogenicity as well as protection against experimental tuberculosis. The results of our study indicate that carefully selected combination of peptides from RD proteins could be used for specific diagnosis as well a potent vaccine against tuberculosis.

Biography :

Email: induvermabio@gmail.com