Abstract
The current life-attenuated measles vaccine recommended for every child of at least 9 months of age is one of the safest and most effective vaccines. However, the vaccine has a few draw backs which may be felt only during later stages of the WHO measles programme. There is a consensus that the development of new measles vaccines cannot wait until their availability becomes obvious and urgent. However, the lack of animal models to assess the risk of atypical measles (a severe syndrome that developed after immunization with a killed vaccine) has been a major obstacle that has only recently been overcome. Numerous experimental vaccines for immunization during early infancy, revaccination of adults or for mass vaccination by non-invasive routes have been proposed [1]. The strategies developed in our laboratory include peptides, conjugate and recombinant polyepitope vaccines based on sequential epitopes. The rational of this approach has been previously discussed [2]. The biological and structural characteristics of these epitopes have been carefully evaluated to assess their usefulness. Although the conformation of peptides is in general very unstable, studies of antigenicity and immunogenicity paired with molecular modeling iteratively shape the understanding of peptide-antibody interactions. Here we describe such an approach for two sequential, neutralizing epitopes of the measles virus (MV) hemagglutinin (H) protein.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Innovations and perspectives in Solid Phase Synthesis & Combinatorial Libraries |
Editors | R. Epton |
Place of Publication | Kingswinford |
Publisher | Mayflower Worldwide Limited |
Pages | 59-62 |
Number of pages | 4 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780951573556 |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2004 |