Synthetic peptide vaccines have a high safety profile, although their low immunogenicity requires the use of potent adjuvants and delivery systems. Self-assembling β-peptides and amphiphilic peptides have been identified as versatile building blocks for the preparation of immunostimulating nanocarriers instead of whole protein carrier to display epitopes. However, a direct comparison of the intrinsic immunogenicity of cross-β-sheet nanofilaments and peptide-amphiphile nanofibrils has never been performed. In this study, the amphiphilic peptide C 16 -V 3 A 3 K 3 (PA) and the 10-mer self-assembling β-peptide I 10 were respectively conjugated with two MHC-peptide epitope models, OVA 253–266 and OVA 323–339 , able to polarize the adaptive immune response differently. Synthetic chimeric peptides self-assembled into cytocompatible nanofilaments that induced a robust antigen-specific IgG antibody response in mice, without the need of any additional adjuvants. The profile of IgG subtypes and the cellular immune response offered preliminary indications that PA induced a balanced Th1/Th2 immune response, whereas I 10 exhibited a Th1-polarized pro-inflammatory response. • Two peptide nanofilaments decorated with model epitopes were respectively assembled from β- and amphiphilic peptides. • All peptide assemblies induced a robust antigen-specific antibody response against the grafted epitopes, without the need of any additional adjuvants • The profile of IgG subtypes and the cellular immune response offered indications that cylindrical micelles induced a balanced Th1/Th2 immune response, whereas cross-β fibrils exhibited a more Th1-polarized pro-inflammatory response.
Tshibwabwa et al. (Wed,) studied this question.