Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Identification of immunotopes against Mycobacterium leprae as immune targets using PhDTm- 12mer phage display peptide library

Marzieh Ferdosian¹, Mohammad Raza Khatami², Ziba Vaise Malekshahi³, Ali Mohammadi², Hamed Haddad Kashani⁴, Mohammad Barat Shooshtari²

¹Medical Biotechnology Department, Biotechnology Research Center, Pasteur Institute; ²Biotechnology Research Center, Institute of Science and New Technologies; ³Department of Medical Biotechnology, School of Advanced Medical Sciences and Technologies, Tehran University of Medical Sciences; ⁴Anatomical Sciences Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran.

For correspondence:- Mohammad Shooshtari Email: behzadshoshtary@gmail.com Tel:+989123146970

Received: 20 February 2015 Accepted: 8 June 2015 Published: 29 July 2015

Citation: Ferdosian M, Khatami MR, Malekshahi ZV, Mohammadi A, Kashani HH, Shooshtari MB. Identification of immunotopes against Mycobacterium leprae as immune targets using PhDTm- 12mer phage display peptide library. Trop J Pharm Res 2015; 14(7):1153-1159 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v14i7.5

© 2015 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the surface epitopes of Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae) and evaluate their efficacy in the production of anti-M. leprae antibodies in an animal model.

Methods: Blood samples were obtained from 34 patients suffering from lepromatous leprosy. Antibodies were obtained from the samples, semi-purified and used to coat the wells of ELISA microplate, and M13 random-peptides library was added to the wells. After four rounds of panning, three clones were isolated and their peptide mimotopes were sequenced. Western blot was used to evaluate the interaction of the isolated mimotopes.

Results: Three selective clones were tested by direct enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and western blot. anti-leprae antibodies in various dilutions and were found to be serological active. Sequencing of the isolated peptides showed identities between the two clones that were able to successfully induce anti-Leprae humoral response in mice.

Conclusion: The findings indicate that the isolated peptides can potentially be used for early diagnosis. However, further research is required to improve their potency as new vaccines against leprosy.

Keywords: Bacteriophage, Vaccine, Leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, Random peptide phage display library