Protein Engineering Strategies for Rational Immunogen Design

Overview

Journal NPJ Vaccines

Date 2021 Dec 18

PMID 34921149

Citations 25

Authors

Timothy M Caradonna

Aaron G Schmidt

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Antibody immunodominance refers to the preferential and asymmetric elicitation of antibodies against specific epitopes on a complex protein antigen. Traditional vaccination approaches for rapidly evolving pathogens have had limited success in part because of this phenomenon, as elicited antibodies preferentially target highly variable regions of antigens, and thus do not confer long lasting protection. While antibodies targeting functionally conserved epitopes have the potential to be broadly protective, they often make up a minority of the overall repertoire. Here, we discuss recent protein engineering strategies used to favorably alter patterns of immunodominance, and selectively focus antibody responses toward broadly protective epitopes in the pursuit of next-generation vaccines for rapidly evolving pathogens.

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