Design and development of synthetic peptide vaccines: past, present and future

Abstract

Synthetic peptide vaccines aiming at the induction of a protective CD8⁺ T-cell response against infectious or malignant diseases are widely used in the clinic but, despite their success in animal models, they do not yet live up to their promise in humans. This review assesses the development of synthetic peptide vaccines, weighs it against the immunological concepts that have emerged, and identifies the key issues that play a role in the failure or success of a synthetic peptide vaccine. The current state-of-the-art peptide vaccine is a complete synthetic inflammatory product that is ingested by professional antigen-presenting cells and stimulates both CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells.

Keywords::

• immunotherapy
• peptide vaccination
• pharmacokinetics
• tolerance
• Toll-like receptor

Acknowledgements & financial disclosure

The authors declare that, as part of their academic work on the development of peptide vaccines against cancer, they are financially supported by two grants from the Dutch Cancer Society (RUL 2003-2817 and 2007-3906), as well as by ISA Pharmaceuticals (Bilthoven, The Netherlands) for carrying out Phase I/II clinical trials with long peptide vaccines. The LUMC, Leiden, The Netherlands holds a patent on long peptide vaccines (US 7,202,034) on which SHvdB, RO and CJM are named as inventors, solely to indicate these facts. None of the authors have direct financial benefit.