A universal anti-HIV-1 Tat epitope vaccine that is fully synthetic and self-adjuvanting

Gideon Goldstein1, John J Chicca

  • 1Thymon L.L.C., Vaccine Development, Short Hills, NJ 07078, USA. gidgold@gmail.com

Vaccine
|November 26, 2009
PubMed

Circulating HIV-1 Tat protein is essential for maintenance of the chronic HIV replication that predicates both HIV transmission and clinical progression to AIDS/death. A synthetic anti-Tat epitope vaccine (TUTI-16) was designed to induce neutralizing antibodies to Tat and, hopefully, provide immunological control of HIV replication. TUTI-16 is composed of (1) a conserved Tat B cell epitope (Tat 4-12), rendered universal by introducing known variant amino acids at variable positions 7, 9 and 12 during solid phase synthesis, (2) a promiscuous T helper sequence and (3) a lipopeptide toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) agonist. TUTI-16 induced high titer antibodies against all 8 known variants of the Tat epitope.

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