A modular approach to assembly of totally synthetic self-adjuvanting lipopeptide-based vaccines allows conformational epitope building

Abstract

The technology described here allows the chemical synthesis of vaccines requiring correctly folded epitopes and that contain difficult or long peptide sequences. The final self-adjuvanting product promotes strong humoral and/or cell-mediated immunity. A module containing common components of the vaccine (T helper cell epitope and the adjuvanting lipid moiety S-[2,3-bis(palmitoyloxy) propyl]cysteine) was assembled to enable a plug and play approach to vaccine assembly. The inclusion within the module of a chemical group with chemical properties complementary and orthogonal to a chemical group present in the target epitope allowed chemoselective ligation of the two vaccine components. The heat..