Two B-cell epitope vaccines based on uPA effectively inhibit fertility in male mice

uPA, a trypsin-like serine protease, was found to take active part in male reproduction. Our previous work had demonstrated the antifertility effects of its full length protein immunization, but with immune tolerance and other latent side effects. Here we discovered two effective B-cell epitopes of uPA for male contraception in growth factor-like domain and kringle domain respectively. Together with carrier protein, immunization of these two epitope peptides could induce high titers of specific antibodies in male mice. Significant reduction of fertility was observed in these two groups in mating trial without evident systemic illness or abnormal mating behavior. Epididymal sperms of immunized males exhibited impaired progressive motility and ability to fertilize eggs in vitro. The immunization of another predicted epitope in serine protease domain and the control groups showed no similar positive results. Importantly, T cells were not activated after the challenge of these B-cell epitopes itself, which suggests that these vaccines do not induce cell-mediated autoimmunity. Taken together, our study discovered two uPA B-cell epitopes as novel targets for male immunocontraception with minimum side effects. Considering their high identity with human uPA protein, these two epitope vaccines hold great promise to be developed for man use in the future.