Dendritic
cells serve as the main immune cells that trigger the
immune response. We developed a simple and cost-effective nanovaccine
platform based on the α1′,2-mannobiose derivative for
dendritic cell targeting. In previous work, we have formulated the
α1,2-mannobiose-based nanovaccine platform with plasmid DNA
and tested it in cattle against BoHV-1 infection. There, we have shown
that the dendritic cell targeting using this nanovaccine platform in vivo can boost the immunogenicity, resulting in a long-lasting
immunity. In this work, we aim to characterize the α1′,2-mannobiose
derivative, which is key in the nanovaccine platform. This DC-targeting
strategy takes advantage of the specific receptor known as DC-SIGN
and exploits its capacity to bind α1,2-mannobiose that is present
at terminal ends of oligosaccharides in certain viruses, bacteria,
and other pathogens. The oxidative conjugation of α1′,2-mannobiose
to NH2-PEG2kDa-DSPE allowed us to preserve the
chemical structure of the non-reducing mannose of the disaccharide
and the OH groups and the stereochemistry of all carbons of the reducing
mannose involved in the binding to DC-SIGN. Here, we show specific
targeting to DC-SIGN of decorated micelles incubated with the Raji/DC-SIGN
cell line and uptake of targeted liposomes that took place in human,
bovine, mouse, and teleost fish DCs in vitro, by
flow cytometry. Specific targeting was found in all cultures, demonstrating
a species-non-specific avidity for this ligand, which opens up the
possibility of using this nanoplatform to develop new vaccines for
various species, including humans.