Dendrimers are structurally well-defined, artificial polymers with physicochemical characteristics that often imitate biomacromolecules. Consequently, they are encouraging candidates for the delivery of peptide-based vaccines. We developed a synthetic protocol for conjugating a peptide antigen derived from human papillomavirus (HPV) E7 protein to a poly(t-butyl acrylate) dendrimer to construct a vaccine candidate. The synthetic pathway utilized copper-catalyzed alkyne-azide 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (CuAAC) click reaction, and resulted in a 76% substitution ratio of the 8-arm dendrimer. The obtained peptide-polymer construct was self-assembled, dialyzed, and characterized by microanalysis and dynamic light scattering.
Keywords: Alkyne-azide cycloaddition; Click chemistry; Peptide vaccines; Peptide-polymer conjugate.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.