Peptimmunology: immunogenic peptides and sequence redundancy

Using short peptide fragments of proteins to elicit antibodies able to recognize the protein from which the peptide sequence was derived, is one of the main goals in immunotherapy today. Indeed, peptide-immunotherapy appears as an obliged way to obtain antibodies of predetermined specificity and exempt from the complications associated with whole cells/entire protein vaccines. However, effective peptide-immunotherapy remains an exciting theoretical speculation largely unrealized to date. The major obstacle in designing effective peptide vaccines is our incapacity to scientifically define peptide immunogenicity. This mini-review schematically describes: 1) the available methods to identify epitopic peptides; 2) the sequence redundancy concept as a possible basis for peptide immunogenicity.