CELLULAR IMMUNITY INDUCING VACCINE

摘要

A novel vaccine that can induce sufficiently high cell-mediated immunity is disclosed. The vaccine of the present invention contains, as an effective component, a polypeptide comprising a tandem repeat structure in which an MHC class I epitope region derived from an antigen protein and a spacer sequence are linked to each other alternately and repeatedly at least three times, or a recombinant vector which comprises a polynucleotide encoding said polypeptide and is capable of expressing said polypeptide in vivo. The spacer sequence is, for example, a sequence generated as an amino acid sequence inevitably encoded by a single base sequence which is designed such that the MHC class I epitope region derived from the antigen protein, an MHC class II epitope region derived from the antigen protein, and at least one higher-order-structure-stabilizing region are encoded by different reading frames in said single base sequence.

主权项

1. A vaccine containing as an effective component a polypeptide comprising a tandem repeat structure in which an MHC class I epitope region and a spacer sequence are linked to each other alternately and repeatedly at least three times, wherein each of MHC class I epitope regions is derived from an antigen protein and each of spacer sequences is either (1) or (2) described below, or a recombinant vector which comprises a polynucleotide encoding said polypeptide and is capable of expressing said polypeptide in vivo:
(1) a sequence generated as an amino acid sequence inevitably encoded by a single base sequence which is designed such that said MHC class I epitope region, an MHC class II epitope region derived from the same or a different antigen protein mentioned above, and at least one higher-order-structure-stabilizing region are encoded by different reading frames in said single base sequence; (2) a sequence which is the same amino acid sequence as (1) except that several amino acids are substituted.