Peptide Vaccine: Progress and Challenges

Abstract

Conventional vaccine strategies have been highly efficacious for several decades in reducing mortality and morbidity due to infectious diseases. The bane of conventional vaccines, such as those that include whole organisms or large proteins, appear to be the inclusion of unnecessary antigenic load that, not only contributes little to the protective immune response, but complicates the situation by inducing allergenic and/or reactogenic responses. Peptide vaccines are an attractive alternative strategy that relies on usage of short peptide fragments to engineer the induction of highly targeted immune responses, consequently avoiding allergenic and/or reactogenic sequences. Conversely, peptide vaccines used in isolation are often weakly immunogenic and require particulate carriers for delivery and adjuvanting. In this article, we discuss the specific advantages and considerations in targeted induction of immune responses by peptide vaccines and progresses in the development of such vaccines against various diseases. Additionally, we also discuss the development of particulate carrier strategies and the inherent challenges with regard to safety when combining such technologies with peptide vaccines.

Human picornaviruses associated with neurological diseases and their neutralization by antibodies

“…The recombinant protein induced EV-A71-specific neutralizing responses in immunized mice and served as a proof-of-concept for HFMD peptide vaccines; however, whether it could also be protective in humans was not studied [162]. Peptide vaccines are easier to produce compared to inactivated virus vaccines, do not require live virus to be handled and allow immunization with a lower protein load [163]. Adjuvants or fusion with highly immunogenic epitopes can improve their immunogenicity, although they are usually still less effective compared to the viral particles.…”

“…Targeting multiple viruses with a single vaccine also requires delivery systems for the effective presentation of multiple epitopes. In this regard, VLP and peptide vaccines may be preferable to inactivated ones, offering tailored solutions in terms of presented antigens, together with comparable immunogenicity, high safety, less tedious production and economic feasibility [163].…”

Multi Epitope Peptide Vaccine Prediction against Sudan Ebola Virus Using Immuno-Informatics Approaches

“…Vaccine production that depends on biochemical experiments can be expensive, time consuming and not always work, although this vaccine formulation of attenuated or inactivated form of microorganism contains a few hundred of unnecessary proteins for the induction of immunity, that may cause allergenic or reactogenic responses [20,21].…”

Immunoinformatic Approach for Epitope-Based Peptide Vaccine against Lagos Rabies Virus Glycoprotein G

“…There is considerable differences in Individuals immune systems that in some cases individual's immune system will not respond adequately to protect against second exposure and this is one of the reasons explaining the failure of immunization [28]. Vaccine production that depends on biochemical experiments are time consuming, expensive and not always work, furthermore this type of vaccines might constitutes a few hundred of unnecessary proteins for the induction of immunity causing many reactogenic or allergic responses [29,30]. Therefore, Insilco prediction of epitopes of appropriate protein residues would help in production of peptide based vaccines with powerful immunogenic and minimal allergenic effect [29].…”