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Discover how PEPperPRINT Peptide Microarray products have been used in different fields of research.

Identification of two conserved B-cell epitopes in the gp90 of reticuloendothelial virus using peptide microarray

Khairy, Wiaam O.A.; Qian, Kun; Shao, Hongxia; Ye, Jianqiang; Qin, Aijian
Veterinary Microbiology.
Nov 2017
Since the gp90 protein of Reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV) plays vital roles in virus neutralization, so detailed analysis of REV-gp90 epitopes is important for the development of epitope based marker vaccines and diagnostic tools for REV infections. In this study, two monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) namely 6C12 and 09980 were used to map the epitopes in REVgp90 using peptide microarray and ELISA. Peptide microarray revealed that mAbs 6C12 and 09980 recognized 216YHPLA220 and 230DPQTSDILEA239 motifs, respectively. This result was confirmed by ELISA using synthetic peptides. Moreover, homology analysis indicated that mAbs defined epitopes are highly conserved among REV strains used in this study. The mAbs and their epitopes identified in this study may have potential applications in development of diagnostic techniques and epitope-based marker vaccines for control of REV infections.

Identification of a Tetanus Toxin Specific Epitope in Single Amino Acid Resolution

Palermo, Andrea; Weber, Laura K.; Rentschler, Simone; Isse, Awale; Sedlmayr, Martyna; Herbster, Karin; List, Volker; Hubbuch, Jürgen; Löffler, Felix F.; Nesterov-Müller, Alexander; Breitling, Frank
Biotechnol. J..
Oct 2017
Vaccinations are among the most potent tools to fight infectious diseases. However, cross-reactions are an ongoing problem and there is an urgent need to fully understand the mechanisms of the immune response. For the development of a methodological workflow, the linear epitopes in the immune response to the tetanus toxin is investigated in sera of 19 vaccinated Europeans applying epitope mapping with peptide arrays. The most prominent epitope, appearing in nine different sera (923IHLVNNESSEVIVHK937), is investigated in a substitution analysis to identify the amino acids that are crucial for the binding of the corresponding antibody species − the antibody fingerprint. The antibody fingerprints of different individuals are compared and found to be strongly conserved (929ExxEVIVxK937), which is astonishing considering the randomness of their development. Additionally, the corresponding antibody species is isolated from one serum with batch chromatography using the amino acid sequence of the identified epitope and the tetanus specificity of the isolated antibody is verified by ELISA. Studying antibody fingerprints with peptide arrays should be transferable to any kind of humoral immune response toward protein antigens. Furthermore, antibody fingerprints have shown to be highly disease-specific and, therefore, can be employed as reliable biomarkers enabling the study of cross-reacting antigens.

Antibody fingerprints in lyme disease deciphered with high density peptide arrays

Weber, Laura K.; Isse, Awale; Rentschler, Simone; Kneusel, Richard E.; Palermo, Andrea; Hubbuch, Jürgen; Nesterov-Mueller, Alexander; Breitling, Frank; Loeffler, Felix F.
Eng. Life Sci..
Oct 2017
Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne infectious disease in Europe and North America. Previous studies discovered the immunogenic role of a surface-exposed lipoprotein (VlsE) of Borreliella burgdorferi. We employed high density peptide arrays to investigate the antibody response to the VlsE protein in VlsE-positive patients by mapping the protein as overlapping peptides and subsequent in-depth epitope substitution analyses. These investigations led to the identification of antibody fingerprints represented by a number of key residues that are indispensable for the binding of the respective antibody. This approach allows us to compare the antibody specificities of different patients to the resolution of single amino acids. Our study revealed that the sera of VlsE-positive patients recognize different epitopes on the protein. Remarkably, in those cases where the same epitope is targeted, the antibody fingerprint is almost identical. Furthermore, we could correlate two fingerprints with human autoantigens and an Epstein-Barr virus epitope; yet, the link to autoimmune disorders seems unlikely and must be investigated in further studies. The other three fingerprints are much more specific for B. burgdorferi. Since antibody fingerprints of longer sequences have proven to be highly disease specific, our findings suggest that the fingerprints could function as diagnostic markers that can reduce false positive test results.

Mapping Putative B-Cell Zika Virus NS1 Epitopes Provides Molecular Basis for Anti-NS1 Antibody Discrimination between Zika and Dengue Viruses

Freire, Marjorie C. L. C.; Pol-Fachin, Laércio; Coêlho, Danilo F.; Viana, Isabelle F. T.; Magalhães, Tereza; Cordeiro, Marli T.; Fischer, Nico; Loeffler, Felix F.; Jaenisch, Thomas; Franca, Rafael F.; Marques, Ernesto T. A.; Lins, Roberto D.
ACS Omega.
Jul 2017
B-cell epitope sequences from Zika virus (ZIKV) NS1 protein have been identified using epitope prediction tools. Mapping these sequences onto the NS1 surface reveals two major conformational epitopes and a single linear one. Despite an overall average sequence identity of ca. 55% between the NS1 from ZIKV and the four dengue virus (DENV) serotypes, epitope sequences were found to be highly conserved. Nevertheless, nonconserved epitope-flanking residues are responsible for a dramatically divergent electrostatic surface potential on the epitope regions of ZIKV and DENV2 serotypes. These findings suggest that strategies for differential diagnostics on the basis of short linear NS1 sequences are likely to fail due to immunological cross-reactions. Overall, results provide the molecular basis of differential discrimination between Zika and DENVs by NS1 monoclonal antibodies.

Anti-CYP4Z1 autoantibodies detected in breast cancer patients

Nunna, Venkatrao; Jalal, Nasir; Bureik, Matthias
Cell Mol Immunol.
Jun 2017

Combination of two epitope identification techniques enables the rational design of soy allergen Gly m 4 mutants

Havenith, Heide; Kern, Karolin; Rautenberger, Paul; Spiegel, Holger; Szardenings, Michael; Ueberham, Elke; Lehmann, Jörg; Buntru, Matthias; Vogel, Simon; Treudler, Regina; Fischer, Rainer; Schillberg, Stefan
Biotechnol. J..
Feb 2017
Detailed IgE-binding epitope analysis is a key requirement for the understanding and development of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to address food allergies. An IgE-specific linear peptide microarray with random phage peptide display for the high-resolution mapping of IgE-binding epitopes of the major soybean allergen Gly m 4, which is a homologue to the birch pollen allergen Bet v 1 is combined. Three epitopes are identified and mapped to a resolution of four key amino acids, allowing the rational design and the production of three Gly m 4 mutants with the aim to abolish or reduce the binding of epitope-specific IgE. In ELISA, the binding of the mutant allergens to polyclonal rabbit-anti Gly m 4 serum as well as IgE purified from Gly m 4-reactive soybean allergy patient sera is reduced by up to 63% compared to the wild-type allergen. Basophil stimulation experiments using RBL-SX38 cells loaded with patient IgE are showed a decreased stimulation from 25% for the wild-type Gly m 4 to 13% for one mutant. The presented approach demonstrates the feasibility of precise mapping of allergy-related IgE-binding epitopes, allowing the rational design of less allergenic mutants as potential therapeutic agents.

Identification of three immunodominant motifs with atypical isotype profile scattered over the Onchocerca volvulus proteome

Lagatie, Ole; Van Dorst, Bieke; Stuyver, Lieven J.
PLoS Negl Trop Dis.
Jan 2017
Understanding the immune response upon infection with the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus and the mechanisms that evolved in this parasite to evade immune mediated elimination is essential to expand the toolbox available for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines development. Using high-density peptide microarrays we scanned the proteome-wide linear epitope repertoire in Cameroonian onchocerciasis patients and healthy controls from Southern Africa which led to the identification of 249 immunodominant antigenic peptides. Motif analysis learned that 3 immunodominant motifs, encompassing 3 linear epitopes, are present in 70, 43, and 31 of these peptides, respectively and appear to be scattered over the entire proteome in seemingly non-related proteins. These linear epitopes are shown to have an atypical isotype profile dominated by IgG1, IgG3, IgE and IgM, in contrast to the commonly observed IgG4 response in chronic active helminth infections. The identification of these linear epitope motifs may lead to novel diagnostic development but further evaluation of cross-reactivity against common co-infecting human nematode infections will be needed.

Anti-ADAMTS13 IgG autoantibodies present in healthy individuals share linear epitopes with those in patients with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura

Grillberger, R.; Casina, V. C.; Turecek, P. L.; Zheng, X. L.; Rottensteiner, H.; Scheiflinger, F.
Haematologica.
Apr 2014

Potent Adjuvanticity of a Pure TLR7-Agonistic Imidazoquinoline Dendrimer

Shukla, Nikunj M.; Salunke, Deepak B.; Balakrishna, Rajalakshmi; Mutz, Cole A.; Malladi, Subbalakshmi S.; David, Sunil A.
PLoS ONE.
Aug 2012
Engagement of toll-like receptors (TLRs) serve to link innate immune responses with adaptive immunity and can be exploited as powerful vaccine adjuvants for eliciting both primary and anamnestic immune responses. TLR7 agonists are highly immunostimulatory without inducing dominant proinflammatory cytokine responses. We synthesized a dendrimeric molecule bearing six units of a potent TLR7/TLR8 dual-agonistic imidazoquinoline to explore if multimerization of TLR7/8 would result in altered activity profiles. A complete loss of TLR8-stimulatory activity with selective retention of the TLR7-agonistic activity was observed in the dendrimer. This was reflected by a complete absence of TLR8-driven proinflammatory cytokine and interferon (IFN)-γ induction in human PBMCs, with preservation of TLR7-driven IFN-α induction. The dendrimer was found to be superior to the imidazoquinoline monomer in inducing high titers of high-affinity antibodies to bovine α-lactalbumin. Additionally, epitope mapping experiments showed that the dendrimer induced immunoreacti

Physical Characterization of the “Immunosignaturing Effect”

Stafford, Phillip; Halperin, Rebecca; Legutki, Joseph Bart; Magee, Dewey Mitchell; Galgiani, John; Johnston, Stephen Albert
Mol Cell Proteomics.
Apr 2012
Identifying new, effective biomarkers for diseases is proving to be a challenging problem. We have proposed that antibodies may offer a solution to this problem. The physical features and abundance of antibodies make them ideal biomarkers. Additionally, antibodies are often elicited early in the ontogeny of different chronic and infectious diseases. We previously reported that antibodies from patients with infectious disease and separately those with Alzheimer’s disease display a characteristic and reproducible immunosignature on a microarray of 10,000 random sequence peptides. Here we investigate the physical and chemical parameters underlying how immunosignaturing works. We first show that a variety of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies raised against different classes of antigens produce distinct profiles on this microarray and the relative affinities are determined. A proposal for how antibodies bind the random sequences is tested. Sera from vaccinated mice and people suffering from a fugal infection are individually assayed to determine the complexity of signals that can be distinguished. Based on these results, we propose that this simple, general and inexpensive system could be optimized to generate a new class of antibody biomarkers for a wide variety of diseases.
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