A new approach in the development of a dental caries vaccine

The genomes of the bacteria Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus, which cause dental caries, currently have been fully sequenced. However, the secondary and tertiary structures of the full-size surface proteins of these microorganisms, by which they attach to the surface of teeth covered with saliva, have not been instrumentally determined at the moment. There are a number of experimental studies on the use of these proteins in the process of developing a dental caries vaccine. However, there is currently no commercially available dental caries vaccine.

The aim of the study was to choose an antigen for subsequent molecular modeling of a unique peptide for the development of a dental caries vaccine.

To develop an effective and safe dental caries vaccine, it is necessary to perform a number of experiments in silico, preceding experiments in vitro and in vivo. Today, this approach is not only generally recognized, but also allows to significantly reduce the cost of experiments and time at the preclinical and clinical studies. According to our hypothesis, as an antigen for the development of a dental caries vaccine, it is necessary to use a short fragment of the surface protein (a peptide) of Streptococcus mutans and/or Streptococcus sobrinus, whose homology in amino acid sequence is 84.8  %, the spatial structure of which should correspond to the spatial structure of the corresponding fragment in a full-sized protein. In addition, the selected protein fragment, which will be part of the vaccine peptide, must be available to antibodies, i. e. located on the surface of the protein and defined as a B-cell linear and spatial epitope. Also, according to our hypothesis, the vaccine peptide may consist of the most stable fragments of alanine and proline rich regions of the surface protein of Streptococcus mutans and/or Streptococcus sobrinus for mutual stabilization of the spatial structure.

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