New Biotechnologycal Approaches for Immunotherapy of Autoimmune Diseases

ABSTRACT

In many physiological processes peptides play a critical role as neurotransmitters, hormones, antibiotics, etc. They have research importance in fields such as immunology, pharmacology, neuroscience and cell biology. There are many approaches for immunotherapies: some of them use peptides as important components of chimeric molecules for immunosuppression, the others, as peptide-based vaccines for immunostimulation. These immunotherapeutic strategies offer the advantages of being safe, easy to produce, devoid of oncogenic potential, and can be chemically or genetically engineered into defined conformational active form. The peptides contain a very important functional part called epitope, which is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B or T cell receptors. Epitopes play a prominent role in peptide-based vaccines and disease diagnosis. Protein engineered or genetically engineered peptides conjugated to an antibody-carrier could be used as a targeting device delivering the epitopes to the cells of interest.

Keywords:

• immuno-peptides
• SLE
• inhibitory B cell receptors
• chimeric molecules
• complement receptors
• DNA vaccines