Comparative efficiency of simple lipopeptide constructs for in vivo induction of virus-specific CTL.

We have previously shown that virus-specific CTL responses can be elicited in vivo by injecting, without adjuvant, 12-40 amino acid-long peptides, modified in C-terminal position by a simple lipidic amino acid. In this paper, we have studied the chemical accessibility, and the ability to induce in mice a CTL response, of a series of lipopeptides derived from the HIV-1 env (312-327) or (302-335) sequences. We showed that a single modification of these peptides by a lipidic amino acid, preferably in C-terminal position, results in the ability to reproducibly induce, without adjuvant, a relevant CTL response. No clear discrimination appeared concerning the nature of the lipidic modification. Our findings indicate that modification of a relatively long peptide by a N epsilon-palmitoyl-L-Lysylamide can be achieved by conventional methods of synthesis and characterization, offering the possibility to develop low-cost synthetic vaccines in models in which the CTL component is of importance.