Engineering of immunogenic peptides by co-linear synthesis of determinants recognized by B and T cells

The potential of synthetic peptides as vaccines is restricted by their frequent lack of immunogenicity. As with haptens, coupling to a carrier protein is usually required to provide T cell help to anti-peptide antibody-producing B cells. In spite of their short length, a few natural or synthetic peptides are immunogenic: they all include both a determinant recognized by B cells and a proven or putative determinant recognized by T cells. We speculated that it should be possible to induce immunogenicity in peptide haptens by the inclusion of a well characterized determinant recognized by T cells. We thus synthesized two peptides, corresponding to different regions of the major protein VP6 of bovine rotavirus, co-linearly linked to a peptide of influenza virus hemagglutinin which had been shown to induce T helper cells in BALB/c mice. Both peptides induced anti-rotavirus antibodies and were more immunogenic than the corresponding bovine serum albumin-conjugated peptides.