title: Confronting the degeneracy of convergent combinatorial immunogens, or 'mixotopes', with the specificity of recognition of the target sequences.
abstract: Immunization by convergent combinatorial peptide libraries, or 'mixotopes' represents an interesting approach for inducing broadly cross-reactive immune response to hypervariable pathogens. The authors have immunized rabbits with a series of eight HIV-1 V3-loop derived constructs of increasing complexity, and analysed the reactivity of the corresponding antisera towards a set of V3-related peptides. Results were surprisingly homogeneous. Mixotopes containing as many as several billion closely related combinatorial sequences were immunogenic, and able to induce V3-specific antibodies. These results suggest that serological cross-reactivity depends on the sequential similarity of the antigen with the parent immunogen. Such 'mixotopes' could represent a useful approach to vaccination against hypervariable pathogens.
authors.affiliation: Faculté de Pharmacie-URA CNRS 1309, Institut Pasteur de Lille, France. helene.gras@pasteur-lille.fr
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gras-Masse
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boutillon
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Diesis
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Deprez
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tartar
mesh_terms: D016915:AIDS Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D003429:Cross Reactions; D005260:Female; D015699:HIV Envelope Protein gp120 / Q000276:immunology*; D007106:Immune Sera / Q000276:immunology; D007114:Immunization; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000276:immunology*; D011817:Rabbits
chemical_list: D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D015699:HIV Envelope Protein gp120; D007106:Immune Sera; D010446:Peptide Fragments