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Mechanistic studies of the immunochemical termination of self-tolerance with unnatural amino acids.

ABSTRACT: For more than 2 centuries active immunotherapy has been at the forefront of efforts to prevent infectious disease [Waldmann TA (2003) Nat Med 9:269-277]. However, the decreased ability of the immune system to mount a robust immune response to self-antigens has made it more difficult to generate therapeutic vaccines against cancer or chronic degenerative diseases. Recently, we showed that the site-specific incorporation of an immunogenic unnatural amino acid into an autologous protein offers a simple and effective approach to overcome self-tolerance. Here, we characterize the nature and durability of the polyclonal IgG antibody response and begin to establish the generality of p-nitrophenylalanine (pNO(2)Phe)-induced loss of self-tolerance. Mutation of several surface residues of murine tumor necrosis factor-alpha (mTNF-alpha) independently to pNO(2)Phe leads to a T cell-dependent polyclonal and sustainable anti-mTNF-alpha IgG autoantibody response that lasts for at least 40 weeks. The antibodies bind multiple epitopes on mTNF-alpha and protect mice from severe endotoxemia induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge. Immunization of mice with a pNO(2)Phe(43) mutant of murine retinol-binding protein (RBP4) also elicited a high titer IgG antibody response, which was cross-reactive with wild-type mRBP4. These findings suggest that this may be a relatively general approach to generate effective immunotherapeutics against cancer-associated or other weakly immunogenic antigens.

SUBMITTER: Grunewald J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2657443 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mechanistic studies of the immunochemical termination of self-tolerance with unnatural amino acids.

Grünewald Jan J Hunt Grady S GS Dong Liqun L Niessen Frank F Wen Ben G BG Tsao Meng-Lin ML Perera Roshan R Kang Mingchao M Laffitte Bryan A BA Azarian Sassan S Ruf Wolfram W Nasoff Marc M Lerner Richard A RA Schultz Peter G PG Smider Vaughn V VV

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20090225 11

For more than 2 centuries active immunotherapy has been at the forefront of efforts to prevent infectious disease [Waldmann TA (2003) Nat Med 9:269-277]. However, the decreased ability of the immune system to mount a robust immune response to self-antigens has made it more difficult to generate therapeutic vaccines against cancer or chronic degenerative diseases. Recently, we showed that the site-specific incorporation of an immunogenic unnatural amino acid into an autologous protein offers a si ...[more]

PMID: 19246393

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Project description:Alpha-amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and are widely used as components of medicinally active molecules and chiral catalysts. Efficient chemo-enzymatic methods for the synthesis of enantioenriched alpha-amino acids have been developed, but it is still a challenge to obtain non-natural amino acids. Alkene hydrogenation is broadly useful for the enantioselective catalytic synthesis of many classes of amino acids, but it is not possible to obtain alpha-amino acids bearing aryl or quaternary alkyl alpha-substituents using this method. The Strecker synthesis-the reaction of an imine or imine equivalent with hydrogen cyanide, followed by nitrile hydrolysis-is an especially versatile chemical method for the synthesis of racemic alpha-amino acids. Asymmetric Strecker syntheses using stoichiometric amounts of a chiral reagent have been applied successfully on gram-to-kilogram scales, yielding enantiomerically enriched alpha-amino acids. In principle, Strecker syntheses employing sub-stoichiometric quantities of a chiral reagent could provide a practical alternative to these approaches, but the reported catalytic asymmetric methods have seen limited use on preparative scales (more than a gram). The limited utility of existing catalytic methods may be due to several important factors, including the relatively complex and precious nature of the catalysts and the requisite use of hazardous cyanide sources. Here we report a new catalytic asymmetric method for the syntheses of highly enantiomerically enriched non-natural amino acids using a simple chiral amido-thiourea catalyst to control the key hydrocyanation step. This catalyst is robust, without sensitive functional groups, so it is compatible with aqueous cyanide salts, which are safer and easier to handle than other cyanide sources; this makes the method adaptable to large-scale synthesis. We have used this new method to obtain enantiopure amino acids that are not readily prepared by enzymatic methods or by chemical hydrogenation.

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Mechanistic studies of the immunochemical termination of self-tolerance with unnatural amino acids.

Publications

Mechanistic studies of the immunochemical termination of self-tolerance with unnatural amino acids.

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