| abstract |
This invention relates to the use of a coiled-coil structural scaffold to generate structure-specific peptides, including synthetic peptides derived from naturally occurring proteins of various origin. The structure of the synthetic peptides utilizes a scaffold of heptad repeat units into which epitopes from coiled- coil regions of native proteins are spliced. In particular, the synthetic peptides may be based on microbial proteins, especially surface proteins, which occur naturally in the coiled-coil form such as pneumococcal surface proteins A and C. The synthetic peptides are immunogenic and can be used to elicit an immune response in an animal. Accordingly, they are useful as vaccines or to stimulate antibody production or cell-mediated immunity to the naturally occurring protein. |