Globular Head-Displayed Conserved Influenza H1 Hemagglutinin Stalk Epitopes Confer Protection against Heterologous H1N1 Virus.

Significant genetic variability in the head region of the influenza A hemagglutinin, the main target of current vaccines, makes it challenging to develop a long-lived seasonal influenza prophylaxis. Vaccines based on the conserved hemagglutinin stalk domain might provide broader cross-reactive immunity. However, this region of the hemagglutinin is immunosubdominant to the head region. Peptide-based vaccines have gained much interest as they allow the immune system to focus on relevant but less immunogenic epitopes. We developed a novel influenza A hemagglutinin-based display platform for H1 hemagglutinin stalk peptides that we identified in an epitope mapping assay using human immune sera and synthetic HA peptides. Flow cytometry and competition assays suggest that the identified stalk sequences do not recapitulate the epitopes of already described broadly neutralizing stalk antibodies. Vaccine constructs displaying 25-mer stalk sequences provided up to 75% protection from lethal heterologous virus challenge in BALB/c mice and induced antibody responses against the H1 hemagglutinin. The developed platform based on a vaccine antigen has the potential to be either used as stand-alone or as prime-vaccine in combination with conventional seasonal or pandemic vaccines for the amplification of stalk-based cross-reactive immunity in humans or as platform to evaluate the relevance of viral peptides/epitopes for protection against influenza virus infection.

Monolith peptide affinity chromatography for quantification of immunoglobulin M.

We have developed a method for quantification of a specific monoclonal IgM directed toward embryonic stem cells based on a peptide affinity monolith. A peptide affinity ligand with the sequence C-C-H-Q-R-L-S-Q-R-K was obtained by epitope mapping using peptide SPOT synthesis. The peptide ligand was covalently immobilized by coupling the N-terminal cysteine to a monolithic disk that was previously modified with iodated spacer molecules. The monolithic disc was used for quantification of purified IgM and for IgM present in mammalian cell culture supernatant. We observed 17% unspecific binding of IgM to the monolithic disk and additionally a product loss in the flow through of 20%. Nevertheless, calibration curves had high correlation coefficients and inter/intra-assay variability experiments proved sufficient precision of the method. A limit of quantification of 51.69 µg/mL for purified IgM and 48.40 µg/mL for IgM in cell culture supernatant could be calculated. The binding capacity was consistent within the period of the study which included more than 200 cycles. The analysis time of less than 2 min is an advantage over existing chromatographic methods that rely on pore diffusion.

Fluorescence-based peptide screening using ligand peptides directly conjugated to a thiolated glass surface.

Functional peptides from peptide libraries are frequently screened using an array format. We report here results of a feasibility study of fluorescence-based peptide screening using an array format on surface-modified glass. The surface of an amine-coated glass slide was modified to contain thiol groups by iminothiolane treatment. The epsilon-amine of the C-terminal lysine from a ligand peptide was iodinated and then spotted onto the thiolated glass surface to covalently conjugate the ligand peptide to the surface via a thioether bond. This covalent immobilization allowed the ligand peptides to withstand washing steps by tightly adhering to the glass surface and confining their subsequent binding reactions within a spotted area. Two representative peptides were used as the ligand peptides; a 'target' (positive) heptapeptide that could specifically bind to trypsin, and a 'control' (negative) hexapeptide that had no binding affinity with trypsin. When fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled trypsin was reacted with the ligand peptides, the target peptide demonstrated distinctively higher (ca. 8.7-fold) fluorescence intensity that was easily differentiated from the control peptide by a fluorescence scanner. A separate experiment using a quartz crystal microbalance confirmed that the difference in binding mass (ca. 9.1-fold) was very close to that seen in fluorescence intensity. These results suggested a quantitative, 1:1 correlation between mass and fluorescence signals. Furthermore, a smaller spot volume and a higher ligand peptide concentration resulted in higher fluorescence signal intensity. This study provides information on the potential for using fluorescence-based screening of functional peptides on a glass array format.