The present invention teaches a way of inducing a broad recognition of dominant and subdominant responses to epitopes of any given antigen of importance for prophylaxis or treatment of a chronic disease by immunizing with pools of overlapping fragments (synthetic peptides e.g. 10-30 mers with 2-20 aa overlap) of the desired antigen in appropriate adjuvants. The T cell repertoire is primed to include not only the immunodominant epitope recognized when the intact molecule is used for immunization and induced by the chronic infection itself, but induce a much broader and balanced response to a number of the subdominant epitopes as well. The resulting T-cell response to subdominant epitopes is important for protection against chronic diseases that on their own induces a response focused only towards immunodominant epitopes. The present invention requires no prior knowledge of the precise localisation and identity of the subdominant epitopes and their recognition in a human population, but expands the T-cell repertoire and thereby the total number of epitopes recognized by specific T cells primed by vaccination from a few immunodominant epitopes to multiple of epitopes of vaccine relevance. For chronic disease controlled by humoral immunity the T helper cell response primed by the peptide mix may be boosted by the full size protein for maximum induction of an antibody response as well.
本发明传授了一种方法,通过在适当的佐剂中使用所需抗原的重叠片段(如 10-30 mers,2-20 aa 重叠的合成肽)池进行免疫,诱导对任何特定抗原表位的优势和次优势反应的广泛识别,这些抗原对预防或治疗慢性疾病具有重要意义。这样,T 细胞组不仅能识别用于免疫接种的完整分子和慢性感染本身诱导的免疫优势表位,而且还能对一些亚优势表位产生更广泛、更均衡的反应。由此产生的对亚优势表位的 T 细胞反应对于防止慢性疾病非常重要,因为慢性疾病本身诱导的反应只针对免疫优势表位。本发明无需事先了解亚优势表位的精确定位和特性及其在人群中的识别情况,但却扩大了 T 细胞库,从而使疫苗接种后特异性 T 细胞识别的表位总数从几个免疫优势表位增加到多个与疫苗相关的表位。对于由体液免疫控制的慢性疾病,
多肽混合物所引发的 T 辅助细胞反应也可通过全尺寸蛋白质来增强,以最大限度地诱导
抗体反应。