Table 4.

Summary of related studies on in silico design and evaluation of candidate vaccines against visceral leishmaniasis

Target species	Protein source	Principle basis of protein selection	In silico screened epitope features	T cell epitope class	Design of vaccine construct	Vaccine evaluation approach	Evaluation features	Theoretical findings	Experimental findings	Reference
L. donovani	Published literature on experimental proteomes of promastigotes/ amastigotes	Increased abundance in amastigotes at protein level; experimental secretion; presence of secretion signals; antigenicity scores	MHC-binding affinity; population coverage; IFN-γ epitope; non-IL-10 epitope; non-B cell epitope	MHC I; MHC II	Chimeric: TLR4 adjuvant + MHC I + MHC II (combination selected based on set criteria)	In silico	Physicochemical properties; simulation of immune response; structural dynamics of vaccine-receptor complex	Antigenicity score: 0.8; coverage: > 98% global; Th1 type potential response; potentially stable binding to receptor	Not available	This study
L. donovani	Screening proteins in GenBank database	Presence of secretion signals	MHC-binding affinity	MHC I; MHC II	Chimeric: TLR4 adjuvant + MHC I + MHC II; disulfide engineering	In silico	Physicochemical properties; binding pocket evaluation; structural dynamics of vaccine-receptor complex	Antigenicity score: 0.77; potentially stable binding to receptor	Not available	[66]
L. donovani	Complete proteome from TriTryDB database; random proteins	Presence of secretion signal; antigenicity scores	MHC-binding affinity; AAR score; population coverage; cluster analysis	MHC I; MHC II	Ensemble	In silico	Physicochemical properties; simulation of immune response; docking of epitope-HLA	Comparable HLA binding affinity of test peptides; coverage: > 99% in endemic area	Not available	[67]
L. donovani	Published literature on protein expression	Increased expression in amastigotes	MHC-binding affinity; TAP binding; population coverage; peptide-HLA docking score	MHC I	Ensemble	In silico, in vitro and in vivo	Population coverage; T cell proliferation; cytokine production; immunization in BALB/c mice	Population coverage: > 92% global	Proliferative CD8+ T cell response; Th1 type cytokine production	[70]
L. donovani	Published literature on protein expression	Increased expression in amastigotes	MHC-binding affinity; population coverage; IFN-γ epitope; peptide-HLA docking score	MHC II	Alone or ensemble	In silico, in vitro and in vivo	Structural dynamics of peptide-HLA complex; cytokine production; T cell proliferation; immunization in BALB/c mice	Potentially stable binding to HLA	Th1 type cytokine production; spleen cell proliferation in mice	[11]
L. infantum	Published literature on protein immunogenicity	Experimentally evaluated immunogenic properties; presence of secretion signal	MHC-binding affinity	MHC I; MHC II	Multi-epitope	In vitro and in vivo	Immunization in BALB/c mice; lymphocytes proliferation assay; cytokine production	Not available	Spleen cell proliferation; Th1 type cytokine production; induction of CD8+ T cells	[10]
L. infantum	Previous reports on whole proteome data mining and protein immunogenicity	Predicted antigen from subtractive genomics study; experimentally evaluated immunogenic properties	MHC-binding affinity; IFN-γ epitope	MHC I; MHC II	Chimeric: TLR4 Adjuvant + MHC-I + MHC-II + TLR4 Adjuvant	In silico	Physicochemical properties; structural dynamics of vaccine-receptor complex	Antigenicity score: 0.95; potentially stable binding to receptor	Not available (evaluated in a follow-up study)	[68]