Quadruple antigenic epitope peptide producing immune protection against classical swine fever virus

Candidate Vaccine Focused on a Classical Swine Fever Virus Epitope Induced Antibodies with Neutralizing Activity

“…The reports published by Tu's group showed that both GST-M (a 15-mer: CTAVSPTTLRTEVVK) and rGST-4E could induce protective immunity, and that rGST-4E was more immunogenic than mono-epitope peptide to produce effective immune protection in rabbits against viral challenge (14,15). Our group also reported the discovery that in the case of influenza M2e, the protective or survival rate was directly related to the degree of epitope density in the single recombinant protein, and that a higher epitope density in a single protein molecule significantly enhanced antigenicity, immunogenicity, and average avidity (16,17).…”

“…Although the predefined epitope, TAVSPTTLR, in its context was demonstrated to induce protective immunity (14,15), possibly due to the neutralizing activity, it was the first time that a single, isolated predefined neutralizing epitope without any information from its context, when grafted, has been demonstrated to have the potential to induce protective immunity. Since this epitope was highly conserved among different strains of CSFV, the development of a potent vaccine focused on this epitope was very promising.…”

“…The non-replicating marker vaccines are largely subunit vaccines based on the immunogenic glycoprotein E2, which induces neutralizing antibodies and confers protective immunity against viral challenge (12,30). These candidate immunogens include the E2 protein without its transmembrane region (TMR) (10,25), the antigenic domains on the N-terminal half of E2 (29), the immunogenic viral peptides (6,7), and their derivatives (14,15). Though not as effective as the live attenuated vaccines (2,4,5,27), they are safe due to their non-replicating polypeptide nature.…”

“…Previous studies on this epitope, particularly the studies done by Tu and associates (14,15), suggested that TAVSPTTLR is an appropriate target for epitope-based vaccine development. Our group recently reported that the microenvironment of the epitope, that is, the flanking sequences or the context of this epitope, may contribute to the induction of functional TAVSPTTLR-specific antibodies (23).…”

A novel DNA vaccine for protective immunity against virulent Mycobacterium bovis in mice

“…Due to the corner effect of proline and the flexibility effect of glycine, an ␣-helix cannot form and thus the expressed proteins can maintain their spatial structure and relatively independent biological functions [38]. The linker is in bold.…”