作者:Alberto Fernández-Tejada、Eric K. Chea、Constantine George、NagaVaraKishore Pillarsetty、Jeffrey R. Gardner、Philip O. Livingston、Govind Ragupathi、Jason S. Lewis、Derek S. Tan、David Y. Gin
DOI:10.1038/nchem.1963
日期:2014.7
Adjuvants are materials added to vaccines to enhance the immunological response to an antigen. QS-21 is a natural product adjuvant under investigation in numerous vaccine clinical trials, but its use is constrained by scarcity, toxicity, instability and an enigmatic molecular mechanism of action. Herein we describe the development of a minimal QS-21 analogue that decouples adjuvant activity from toxicity and provides a powerful platform for mechanistic investigations. We found that the entire branched trisaccharide domain of QS-21 is dispensable for adjuvant activity and that the C4-aldehyde substituent, previously proposed to bind covalently to an unknown cellular target, is also not required. Biodistribution studies revealed that active adjuvants were retained preferentially at the injection site and the nearest draining lymph nodes compared with the attenuated variants. Overall, these studies have yielded critical insights into saponin structureâfunction relationships, provided practical synthetic access to non-toxic adjuvants, and established a platform for detailed mechanistic studies. Adjuvants are used to increase the immune response to molecular vaccines. A minimal synthetic variant of the saponin natural product QS-21 has been developed as a potent, non-toxic adjuvant, enabling dissection of structural requirements in the triterpene domain and in vivo biodistribution studies to probe mechanisms of action.
佐剂是添加到疫苗中的材料,用于增强对抗原的免疫反应。QS-21 是一种天然产品佐剂,目前正在许多疫苗临床试验中进行研究,但其使用受到稀缺性、毒性、不稳定性和分子作用机制不明等因素的限制。在本文中,我们描述了一种最小 QS-21 类似物的开发过程,这种类似物能将佐剂活性与毒性分离开来,为机理研究提供了一个强大的平台。我们发现,QS-21 的整个支链三糖结构域对于佐剂活性来说是不可或缺的,而之前被认为能与未知细胞靶点共价结合的 C4-醛取代基也不是必需的。生物分布研究表明,与减弱的变体相比,活性佐剂优先保留在注射部位和最近的引流淋巴结。总之,这些研究为了解皂苷的结构与功能关系提供了重要依据,为合成无毒佐剂提供了实用途径,并为详细的机理研究建立了平台。佐剂用于提高分子疫苗的免疫反应。皂苷天然产物 QS-21 的最小合成变体已被开发成一种强效、无毒的佐剂,从而能够剖析三萜结构域的结构要求,并通过体内生物分布研究来探究其作用机制。