The effect of the length of a malarial epitope on its antigenicity and immunogenicity in an epitope presentation system using the Pseudomonas aeruginosa outer membrane protein OprF as the carrier.

This study showed that the antigenicity of a malarial epitope increased with the length of the epitope when inserted at positions aa26 (amino acid position 26) and aa196, but not at aa213, of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa major outer membrane protein OprF (326 amino acids). Immunization studies showed that a 19-aa epitope was significantly more immunogenic than a 7-aa epitope when inserted at aa26 of OprF, while neither an 11- nor a 19-aa epitope fused to the C-terminus of glutathione S-transferase was immunogenic.