MALARIA MULTIPLE ANTIGEN PEPTIDE (MAP) VACCINE

疟疾感染在流行地区造成约300万人死亡，全世界每年有超过20亿人面临感染这种疾病的风险。这种病的病原体是疟原虫属的寄生虫。随着对这种寄生虫的耐药性的出现，有必要开发疟疾疫苗。其他人正在使用几种方法来开发安全有效的疫苗。我们选择开发一种多抗原肽（MAPs）疫苗，因为它绕过了使用减毒活寄生虫、热杀寄生虫或重组抗原时遇到的若干限制。例如，外因的存在和产生足够寄生虫的困难通常与活的或热死的寄生虫有关。同样，重组抗原的生产需要劳动密集型的纯化和表征过程。我们成功地合成了三种不同的map，它们含有疟原虫生命周期中表达的不同抗原的表位。这些包括来自肝期特异性蛋白（LSA-1）、血期裂殖子表面抗原（MSP-1）和孢子子特异性环孢子子蛋白（CSP）的T细胞和b细胞表位，它们是完全可表征的。这些map已经在四种不同的小鼠品系中进行了评估，以表征免疫反应的类型。

Malaria infection causes ~ 3 million deaths in endemic areas and over two billion people world-wide per year are at risk of getting the disease. The causative agent of the disease is the parasite of genus Plasmodium. With emergence of drug resistance to this parasite, there is a need for developing malaria vaccine. Several approaches are being used by others to develope a safe and efficacious vaccine. We have choosen to develope a mutiple antigen peptide (MAPs)vaccine because it circumvents several limmitations which one encounters while using attenuated live parasites,heat killed parasites or recombinat antigens. For example,presence of adventitious agents, and difficulty of generating enough parasites is often associated with live or heat killed parasites. Simlarly, production of recombinant antigens requires labor intensive process of purification and characterization. We have sucessfully synthesized three different MAPs containing epitopes from different antigens expressed during life cycle of malaria parasite. These include T- and B-cell epitopes from liver stage specific protein (LSA-1), blood stage merozoite surface antigen (MSP-1), and sporozoite specific circumsporozoite protein (CSP), that are fully characterizable. These MAPs have been evaluated in four different strains of mice to characterize the type of immune response.