Overlapping synthetic peptides as vaccines

Several vaccine strategies aim to generate cell-mediated immunity (CMI) against microorganisms or tumors. While epitope-based vaccines offer advantages, knowledge of specific epitopes and frequency of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) alleles is required. Here we show that using promiscuous overlapping synthetic peptides (OSP) as immunogens generated peptide-specific CMI in all vaccinated outbred mice and in different strains of inbred mice; CMI responses also recognized viral proteins. OSP immunogens also induced CMI ex vivo in dendritic cell/T-cell cocultures involving cells from individuals with different HLA haplotypes. Thus, broad CMI was induced by OSP in different experimental settings, using different immunogens, without identifying either epitopes or MHC backgrounds of the vaccinees.