Enhanced immunogenicity of multivalent MUC1 glycopeptide antitumour vaccines based on hyperbranched polymers.

Enhancing the immunogenicity of an antitumour vaccine still poses a major challenge. It depends upon the selected antigen and the mode of its presentation. We here describe a fully synthetic antitumour vaccine, which addresses both aspects. For the antigen, a tumour-associated MUC1 glycopeptide as B-cell epitope was synthesised and linked to the immunostimulating T-cell epitope P2 derived from tetanus toxoid. The MUC1-P2 conjugate is presented multivalently on a hyperbranched polyglycerol to the immune system. In comparison to a related vaccine of lower multivalency, this vaccine exposing more antigen structures on the hyperbranched polymer induced significantly stronger immune responses in…