title: Epitopic peptides with low similarity to the host proteome: towards biological therapies without side effects.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  A structured analysis of the literature indicates that a low level of sequence similarity to the host proteome modulates the B cell epitope pool in the humoral immune response toward protein antigens. From a clinical point of view, low-similarity peptides might have strong repercussions for the rational development of peptide-based treatments for cancer, autoimmunity and infectious diseases. The most attractive feature of the similarity concept is that it appears to guarantee the highest specificity and lowest cross-reactivity when designing effective, safe and theoretically infallible (immuno)therapeutic tools.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This review describes the research pathway from protein- to peptide-based therapies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Using the breast-cancer-associated BRCA2 protein as a model, the principle of sequence uniqueness is defined as the rationale for a pharmacological platform that might yield improved results in both patient survival and quality of life.
authors.affiliation: University of Bari, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bari, Italy. d.kanduc@biologia.uniba.it
authors.forename: Darja
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kanduc
mesh_terms: D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins; D015551:Autoimmunity; D024682:BRCA2 Protein / Q000276:immunology; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte; D006801:Humans; D010455:Peptides / Q000276:immunology*; D020543:Proteome; D014612:Vaccines / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins; C118024:BLID protein, human; D024682:BRCA2 Protein; C551750:BRCA2 protein, human; D018985:Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte; D010455:Peptides; D020543:Proteome; D014612:Vaccines