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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1990 Apr;87(7):2545–2549. doi: 10.1073/pnas.87.7.2545

Immunological properties of hepatitis B core antigen fusion proteins.

M J Francis 1, G Z Hastings 1, A L Brown 1, K G Grace 1, D J Rowlands 1, F Brown 1, B E Clarke 1
PMCID: PMC53726  PMID: 2320575

Abstract

The immunogenicity of a 19 amino acid peptide from foot-and-mouth disease virus has previously been shown to approach that of the inactivated virus from which it was derived after multimeric particulate presentation as an N-terminal fusion with hepatitis B core antigen. In this report we demonstrate that rhinovirus peptide-hepatitis B core antigen fusion proteins are 10-fold more immunogenic than peptide coupled to keyhole limpet hemocyanin and 100-fold more immunogenic than uncoupled peptide with an added helper T-cell epitope. The fusion proteins can be readily administered without adjuvant or with adjuvants acceptable for human and veterinary application and can elicit a response after nasal or oral dosing. The fusion proteins can also act as T-cell-independent antigens. These properties provide further support for their suitability as presentation systems for "foreign" epitopes in the development of vaccines.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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