1 research outputs found
Peptide Amphiphile Micelle Vaccine Size and Charge Influence the Host Antibody Response
Vaccines
are one of the best health care advances ever developed,
having led to the eradication of smallpox and near eradication of
polio and diphtheria. While tremendously successful, traditional vaccines
(i.e., whole-killed or live-attenuated) have been associated with
some undesirable side effects, including everything from mild injection
site inflammation to the autoimmune disease GuillaināBarreĢ
syndrome.
This has led recent research to focus on developing subunit vaccines
(i.e., protein, peptide, or DNA vaccines) since they are inherently
safer because they deliver only the bioactive components necessary
(i.e., antigens) to produce a protective immune response against the
pathogen of interest. However, a major challenge in developing subunit
vaccines is overcoming numerous biological barriers to effectively
deliver the antigen to the secondary lymphoid organs where adaptive
immune responses are orchestrated. Peptide amphiphile micelles are
a class of biomaterials that have been shown to possess potent self-adjuvanting
vaccine properties, but their optimization capacity and underlying
immunostimulatory mechanism are not well understood. The present work
investigated the influence of micelle size and charge on the materialsā
bioactivity, including lymph node accumulation, cell uptake ability,
and immunogenicity. The results generated provide considerable insight
into how micelles exert their biological effects, yielding a micellar
toolbox that can be exploited to either enhance or diminish host immune
responses. This exciting development makes peptide amphiphile micelles
an attractive candidate for both immune activation and suppression
applications