Preparation and properties of totally synthetic immunogens

Although the induction of antibodies and T cells by synthetic peptides repr esenting defined antigenic determinants is a routine laboratory procedure, their use as vaccines has not yet been generally realised. There are a numb er of reasons for this and paramount is the limitation of valency which aff ects not only immunogenicity, but also the coverage of the antigenic univer se. This paper is a review of our own work in which we have assembled synth etic peptides into multivalent artificial proteins and then examined their immunological properties. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserve d.