SYNTHETIC PEPTIDE VACCINES AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

Abstract

The development of suitable synthetic peptide vaccines depends both on the search for antigenic determinants in a given bacterial, viral or parasitic antigen and for immunologically acceptable carrier molecules for those antigenic determinants. This encounters a series of problems which are briefly discussed: synthesis of peptide antigens mainly made up from trifunctional amino acids, finding of antigenic determinants, which on immunization cause antibodies that recognize and precipitate not only the synthetic determinant but also the whole native antigen of which the determinants are just a few epitopic entities, construction of immunologically useful polymeric carrier molecules to which the synthetic antigenic determinants can be bonded in a well-defined and reproducible fashion, conformational considerations, which might become essential when a suitable epitope of a native antigen is substracted from its shape - inducing parent environment and, last not but not least, human health care aspects with respect to the applicability of results obtained from synthetic peptide vaccine developments for veterinarian diseases.