Harnessing self-assembled peptide nanoparticles in epitope vaccine design

Abstract

Vaccination has been one of the most successful breakthroughs in medical history. In recent years, epitope-based subunit vaccines have been introduced as a safer alternative to traditional vaccines. However, they suffer from limited immunogenicity. Nanotechnology has shown value in solving this issue. Different kinds of nanovaccines have been employed, among which virus-like nanoparticles (VLPs) and self-assembled peptide nanoparticles (SAPNs) seem very promising. Recently, SAPNs have attracted special interest due to their unique properties, including molecular specificity, biodegradability, and biocompatibility. They also resemble pathogens in terms of their size. Their multivalency allows an orderly repetitive display of antigens on their surface, which induces a stronger immune response than single immunogens. In vaccine design, SAPN self-adjuvanticity is regarded an outstanding advantage, since the use of toxic adjuvants is no longer required. SAPNs are usually composed of helical or β-sheet secondary structures and are tailored from natural peptides or de novo structures. Flexibility in subunit selection opens the door to a wide variety of molecules with different characteristics. SAPN engineering is an emerging area, and more novel structures are expected to be generated in the future, particularly with the rapid progress in related computational tools. The aim of this review is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of self-assembled peptide nanoparticles and their use in vaccine design in recent studies. Additionally, principles for their design and the application of computational approaches to vaccine design are summarized.

Poly(amino acids) as a potent self-adjuvanting delivery system for peptide-based nanovaccines

“…As nanoparticles have been shown to have promising self-adjuvanting properties (12,13), amphiphiles that self-assemble into them are often used in peptide vaccine delivery (14)(15)(16). For example, hydrophobic dendritic poly(tert-butyl acrylate) has previously been conjugated to a variety of peptide epitopes, including GAS-derived peptides, and the conjugates have been self-assembled to form particles (17).…”

Designing self-assembled peptide nanovaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae: An in silico strategy

“…Coiled-coil motifs, due to their high stability and well-defined structures have gained more attention in developing SAPN vaccine [60]. In recent years, because of unique characterizations of SAPN, including biodegradability, biocompatibility, size similarity to pathogen [61], self-adjuvanticity, and containing repetitive structure [62], they have been proposed as prominent structure in designing epitope-based peptide vaccine [10,63]. Each SAPN monomer, the subunit that oligomerizes to form the nanoparticle, contains two coiled-coil domains fused together by proper linkers, which are able to oligomerize, and consequently, form nanoparticles.…”

“…In general, the majority of epitope-based vaccines can cause induction of cellular or/and humoral immunity as well as offer a safer and more easy-produced alternative for the prevention of diseases; however, the low immunogenicity is the main disadvantage of such types of vaccines. For solving this problem, several methods have been used to enhance the immunogenicity epitopes vaccines, like prescribing the multiple doses of vaccine, adding immunostimulatory agents such an adjuvant to the vaccine [9], and the recent strategy is applying self-assembled peptide motif including betasheets or coiled-coil structures in the epitope vaccine [10]. Besides above-mentioned strategies, incorporating universal T-helper epitopes like diphtheria toxoids (DTD) into vaccine can enhance vaccine efficacy.…”

Peptide-Based Vaccination Therapy for Rheumatic Diseases

“…With the rapid advances in nanotechnology, nanoparticlecarried vaccines have emerged as novel approaches to vaccine design, and their use in peptide-based tolerogenic vaccinations has gained increasing concerns in recent years [19,92]. Nanoparticles coated with tolerogenic antigen peptides is a novel and promising strategy for inducing antigen-specific immune tolerance, which may promote the application of peptide-based vaccination in rheumatic diseases.…”