Background

The most common means for generating an immune response is by administering a vaccine using an adjuvant to enhance the recipient's immune response to a supplied antigen. Yet, some vaccines fail to provide sufficient adjuvant activity. Therefore, there is a need in the field to provide an adjuvant when the vaccine alone is insufficient for stimulating antigen-presenting cells.

Sometimes this can be provided by mixing an adjuvant with the vaccine (e.g. mixing MF59 adjuvant with an influenza vaccine). However, this approach is not suitable for all situations and a more general approach is needed to ensure that each antigen-adjuvant pairing is co-extensive in space and time. In addition, this should be done through a self-assembling intracellular complex that eliminates the need for a chemical crosslinker. Using CD40 as an example, such a self-assembling complex should generate multimers of three or more CD40 intracellular cytoplasmic domains as an adjuvant and this complex would need to be operatively linked to the antigen in order that the antigen and adjuvant be co-extensive.

Technology Description

Scientists at UC San Diego have developed compositions and methods to enhance an immune response in order to prevent or treat infections or hyperproliferative diseases, such as cancer. More particularly, the composition is an immunostimulatory intracellular signaling peptide fused directly or indirectly to a peptide that leads to multimerization into complexes of three or more units, where the intracellular signaling peptide must be present in a complex of three or more units in order to stimulate an immune response. Inserting this fusion construct into viruses like HIV-1 or introducing it into dendritic cells or tumor cells is predicted to lead to a positive therapeutic effect in humans, non-human mammals, birds, and fish. In addition, inserting this fusion construct into viral vaccines is predicted to enhance their effectiveness.

Patent Status

Patent Pending

Other Information

Contact

University of California, San Diego Technology Transfer Office / invent@ucsd.edu / tel: View Phone Number. Please reference Tech ID #20955.

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