Ali Amjad, Hamid Muhammad Hurrarah Bin, Nasir Samavi, Ishaq Zaara, Anwer Farha
Atta Ur Rahman School of Applied Biosciences (ASAB), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Sector H-12, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan.
MGBIO (SMC-PRIVATE) Limited, C4 H Building 1, National Science and Technology Park, NUST, H-12, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan.
Sci Rep. 2025 Aug 28;15(1):31745. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-01201-0.
Reverse Vaccinology (RV) has revolutionized vaccine discovery, utilizing bioinformatics to surpass traditional methods in identifying genes and proteins. By analyzing pathogen genomic data, RV pinpoints proteins with key traits such as immunogenicity, surface localization, and conservation across strains. Despite its advantages, current RV tools face challenges like prediction accuracy, computational demands, and accessibility. To address these challenges, we introduce B-vac, an executable pipeline designed to streamline bacterial vaccine design. B-vac features a user-friendly interface and robust algorithms for high-throughput proteomics data analysis, covering modules like Localization, Non-host Homolog, Virulence Factor, and Epitope Mapping. It operates offline, enhancing accessibility for researchers with limited computational resources. B-vac is equipped with epitope libraries, bacterial proteomes and virulence factor database which helps the program process the protein sequences locally and feeds data back to users with the ability to set variables and toggles for cut-off and filter values. The B-vac pipeline uses a string-based matching approach to match proteomes supplied by users with the pipeline's curated database. This approach aligns and compares pathogen protein sequences by string similarity and enables the researchers to easily identify motifs important for immunogenic function. Evaluation of the pipeline by employing the Helicobacter pylori proteome revealed B-vac's effectiveness in identifying vaccine candidates. B-vac offers a user-friendly, standalone solution for bacterial vaccine development, eliminating the need for external libraries and enabling offline usability, addressing key gaps in convenience and accessibility compared to existing RV tools. B-vac can be downloaded from: https://mgbio.tech/tools/ .
反向疫苗学（RV）彻底改变了疫苗研发方式，它利用生物信息学在识别基因和蛋白质方面超越了传统方法。通过分析病原体基因组数据，RV可精准定位具有免疫原性、表面定位和跨菌株保守性等关键特性的蛋白质。尽管具有诸多优势，但当前的RV工具仍面临预测准确性、计算需求和可及性等挑战。为应对这些挑战，我们推出了B-vac，这是一个旨在简化细菌疫苗设计的可执行流程。B-vac具有用户友好的界面和用于高通量蛋白质组学数据分析的强大算法，涵盖定位、非宿主同源物、毒力因子和表位映射等模块。它可离线运行，提高了计算资源有限的研究人员的可及性。B-vac配备了表位文库、细菌蛋白质组和毒力因子数据库，有助于程序在本地处理蛋白质序列，并将数据反馈给用户，用户能够设置变量以及截止值和过滤值的切换选项。B-vac流程采用基于字符串的匹配方法，将用户提供的蛋白质组与该流程精心策划的数据库进行匹配。这种方法通过字符串相似度对齐和比较病原体蛋白质序列，使研究人员能够轻松识别对免疫原功能重要的基序。通过使用幽门螺杆菌蛋白质组对该流程进行评估，结果显示B-vac在识别疫苗候选物方面具有有效性。B-vac为细菌疫苗开发提供了一个用户友好的独立解决方案，无需外部文库，具备离线可用性，弥补了与现有RV工具相比在便利性和可及性方面的关键差距。可从以下网址下载B-vac：https://mgbio.tech/tools/ 。
