title: Immunization with HIV protease peptides linked to syngeneic erythrocytes.
abstract: New potent vaccine adjuvants are desirable for increasing the efficacy of novel vaccine modalities such as DNA and peptides. We therefore tested if syngeneic erythrocytes could serve as delivery vectors for selected HIV peptides and compared the potency of these constructs to immunization with peptides in phosphate buffered saline or in incomplete Freunds adjuvant. Immunization of mice with peptides in a low dose (5 ng) coupled to erythrocytes induced a weak immune response in mice. These peptides alone (5 microg) gave no immune responses, while formulating the peptides (50 microg) in IFA induced strong homologous immunity as well as prominent cross reactivity to a related mutant epitope. Thus, vaccine delivery using syngeneic erythrocytes, although attractive for clinical use, might be of limited value due to the low amount of antigen that can be loaded per erythrocyte.
authors: Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. andreas.boberg@smi.ki.se
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Boberg
authors: Sabrina
authors: S
authors: Dominici
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Brave
authors: Kristian
authors: K
authors: Hallermalm
authors: Jorma
authors: J
authors: Hinkula
authors: Mauro
authors: M
authors: Magnani
authors: Britta
authors: B
authors: Wahren