METHOD FOR ALTERING UNDESIRABLE IMMUNE RESPONSES TO POLYPEPTIDES

摘要

The disclosed method involves providing a collection of mutant polypeptides where the amino acid sequence of each mutant polypeptide differs in at least one position from a polypeptide of interest, identifying mutant polypeptides that exhibit less of the immune response than the polypeptide of interest, and identifying mutant polypeptides with less potential for eliciting an undesirable immune response that still retain the desired characteristic(s). The collection of mutant polypeptides can be provided by mutagenizing nucleic acid encoding a polypeptide of interest and expressing the mutagenized nucleic acid to produce mutant polypeptides. The method is especially useful for reducing immune responses involving both linear and/or conformational epitopes on a polypeptide of interest. This is possible because the recombinant polypeptides used as substrates for mutagenesis in the method are essentially full length, remaining structurally similar to the polypeptide of interest and displaying essentially the same conformational epitopes.