Polytope vaccines for the codelivery of multiple CD8 T-cell epitopes.

Vaccines against a number of diseases, including HIV, Epstein Barr virus, malaria and several cancers, are believed to require the coinduction of multiple alphabeta CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses that are directed towards a number of different target antigens. The difficulties associated with making large recombinant vaccines that contain numerous antigens has led to the development of alphabeta CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte polyepitope or polytope vaccine approach, where multiple (usually 8-10 amino acids long) alphabeta CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte epitopes, derived from several antigens are conjoined into single artificial constructs. Such polytope constructs can be delivered using a number of different vaccine vector modalities with each epitope in the construct emerging as individually immunogenic.