The effect of amino acid spacers on the antigenicity of dimeric peptide–inducing cross‐reacting antibodies to a cell surface protein antigen of Streptococcus mutans

Abstract

In the course of developing a synthetic peptide vaccine for dental caries, we identified a unique 13-mer peptide named PAc(365-377), TYEAALKQYEADL, as a minimum peptide inducing cross-inhibiting antibodies to a cell surface protein antigen (PAc) of Streptococcus mutans. However, the peptide could hardly induce the production of antibody in the absence of adjuvant. Thus using this peptide as a unit peptide, tandem constructs of dimeric unit peptide with or without spacer amino acid residues were synthesized, and their antigenicities were examined in B10.D2 mice. Significant augmentation of antigenicity was obtained in all of the dimeric unit peptides with spacers, especially for lysine spacers. In addition, analysis for cross-reactivity of anti-construct antibodies against a set of double valine-substituted analogues of the unit peptide revealed that the di-lysine spacer might be more effective in inducing the cross-reacting antibodies to rPAc.

Protection against H1N1 influenza challenge by a DNA vaccine expressing H3/H1 subtype hemagglutinin combined with MHC class II-restricted epitopes

“…The "KK" linker was also added to prevent the epitopes between subtypes from "splitting", that is, to avoid generation of new junctional epitopes [16,17]. Based on the design of the epitope box, the nucleotide sequences were codon-optimized and the peptides synthesized accordingly (Xu Guan Biological Engineering Co., Ltd. Shanghai, PR China).…”

Short Amyloid-β (Aβ) Immunogens Reduce Cerebral Aβ Load and Learning Deficits in an Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Model in the Absence of an Aβ-Specific Cellular Immune Response

“…1 A) to reduce the production of antibodies against newly created epitopes created by the direct linkage of a tandem repeat (Oishi et al, 2001). R-2ϫA␤1-15 peptide, the second immunogen, contained, in addition, a three-amino-acid RGD-cell attachment motif at the N terminus, which was previously shown to increase immunogenicity and replace the use of adjuvant in combination with a different immunogen (Yano et al, 2003).…”

Predefined spacers between epitopes on a recombinant epitope-peptide impacted epitope-specific antibody response

“…Different spacers were also added between epitopes to study its impact on the epitope presentation (Table 2) [26][27][28][29]. Our experimental results in this study showed that an appropriate spacer between the predefined epitopes was necessary for the design of an epitope-vaccine antigen.…”