Antigen discovery in bacterial panproteomes

There is still a lack of vaccines for many bacterial infections for which the best treatment option would be a prophylactic one. On the other hand, effectiveness has been questioned for some existing vaccines, prompting new developments. Therapeutic vaccines are also becoming a treatment option in specific cases where antibiotics tend to fail. In this scenario, refinement and extension of the classical reverse vaccinology approach is allowing scientists to find new and more effective antigens. In this chapter, we describe an in silico methodology that integrates pangenomic, immunoinformatic, structural, and evolutionary approaches for the screening of potential antigens in a given bacterial species. The strategy focuses on targeting relatively conserved epitopes in core proteins to design broadly cross-protective vaccines and avoid allele-specific immunity. The proposed methodological steps and computational tools can be easily implemented in a reverse vaccinology approach not only to identify new leads with strong immune response but also to develop diagnostic assays.