A totally synthetic, self-assembling, adjuvant-free MUC1 glycopeptide vaccine for cancer therapy

J Am Chem Soc. 2012 May 30;134(21):8730-3. doi: 10.1021/ja211725s. Epub 2012 May 17.

Abstract

In the development of vaccines for epithelial tumors, the key targets are MUC1 proteins, which have a variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) bearing tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs), such as Tn and STn. A major obstacle in vaccine development is the low immunogenicity of the short MUC1 peptide. To overcome this obstacle, we designed, synthesized, and evaluated several totally synthetic self-adjuvanting vaccine candidates with self-assembly domains. These vaccine candidates aggregated into fibrils and displayed multivalent B-cell epitopes under mild conditions. Glycosylation of Tn antigen on the Thr residue of PDTRP sequence in MUC1 VNTR led to effective immune response. These vaccines elicited a high level antibody response without any adjuvant and induced antibodies that recognized human breast tumor cells. These vaccines appeared to act through a T-cell independent pathway and were associated with the activation of cytotoxic T cells. These fully synthetic, molecularly defined vaccine candidates had several features that hold promise for anticancer therapy.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Cancer Vaccines / chemical synthesis*
  • Cancer Vaccines / chemistry
  • Cancer Vaccines / immunology*
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Drug Design*
  • Humans
  • Microsatellite Repeats
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mucin-1 / chemistry*
  • Mucin-1 / genetics
  • Neoplasms / immunology
  • Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Neoplasms / therapy
  • Peptide Fragments / chemical synthesis*
  • Peptide Fragments / chemistry
  • Peptide Fragments / immunology*
  • Protein Multimerization
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary

Substances

  • Cancer Vaccines
  • Mucin-1
  • Peptide Fragments