The covalent attachment of an innate immune system stimulating agent to an antigen can provide active vaccine modalities capable of eliciting a potent immune response against the incorporated antigen. Here we describe the design, automated synthesis and immunological evaluation of a set of four muramyl dipeptide–peptide antigen conjugates. Muramyl dipeptide (MDP) represents a well-known ligand for the intracellular NOD2 receptor and our study shows that covalently linking an MDP-moiety to an antigenic peptide can lead to a construct that is capable of stimulating the NOD2 receptor if the ligand is attached at the anomeric center of the muramic acid. The constructs can be processed by dendritic cells (DCs) and the conjugation does not adversely affect the presentation of the incorporated SIINFEKL epitope on MHC-I molecules. However, stimulation of the NOD2 receptor in DCs was not sufficient to provide a strong immunostimulatory signal.
将一种先天免疫系统刺激剂与抗原的共价结合可以提供能够引发对所含抗原产生强效免疫反应的活性疫苗模式。在这里,我们描述了一组四种muramyl二肽-肽抗原共轭物的设计、自动合成和免疫评估。Muramyl二肽(MDP)代表了细胞内NOD2受体的一个众所周知的配体,我们的研究表明,如果将MDP基团共价连接到一个抗原肽上,可以得到一个构造物,能够刺激NOD2受体,如果配体连接在muramic酸的异构中心。这些构造物可以被树突状细胞(DCs)处理,共轭并不会对MHC-I分子上所含SIINFEKL表位的呈现产生不利影响。然而,在DCs中刺激NOD2受体并不足以提供强烈的免疫刺激信号。