A lipidated bi‑epitope vaccine comprising of MHC‑I and MHC‑II binder peptides elicits protective CD4 T cell and CD8 T cell immunity against mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

The clinical trials conducted at Chingleput India suggest that BCG fails to protect against tuberculosis (TB) in TB-endemic population. Recent studies advocate that non-tuberculous mycobacteria and latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection interferes in the antigen processing and presentation of BCG in inducing protective immunity against Mtb. Thereby, indicating that any vaccine that require extensive antigen processing may not be efficacious in TB-endemic zones. Recently, we have demonstrated that the vaccine candidate L91, which is composed of lipidated promiscuous MHC-II binder epitope, derived from latency associated Acr1 antigen of Mtb is immunogenic in the murine and Guinea pig models of TB and conferred better protection than BCG against Mtb. Methods: In this study, we have used a multi-stage based bi-epitope vaccine, namely L4.8, comprising