Design and construction of a recombinant epitope-peptide gene as a universal epitope-vaccine strategy.

The multiple sequence and antigenic variability of HIV-1 has led to unprecedented difficulties in the development of effective vaccines. More and more experimental evidence suggests that HIV-1 mutants have resulted in immune evasion and pose a challenge for conventional efforts to prepare effective vaccines. We have suggested that an epitope-vaccine could offer a new strategy against HIV-1. Several candidate epitope-vaccines were prepared and systematically studied in animal experiments. Here, we have proposed a universal method for the preparation of immunogens for an epitope-vaccine by genetic engineering. With this method, copies of epitopes from one or more antigens can be conveniently combined into one recombinant immunogen, which may also help to design epitope-vaccines against other viral infections.