Tattooing has been shown to be very efficient at inducing immunity by vaccination with DNA vaccines. In this study, we examined the usability of tattooing for delivery of peptide vaccines. We compared tattooing with subcutaneous (s.c.) needle injection using peptides derived from human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16) proteins. We observed that higher peptide-specific immune responses were elicited after vaccination with the simple peptides (E7(44-62) and E7(49-57)) and keyhole limpet hemocyanin-(KLH)-conjugated peptides (E7(49-57), L2(18-38) and L2(108-120)) with a tattoo device compared to s.c. inoculation. The administration of the synthetic oligonucleotide containing immunostimulatory CpG motifs (ODN1826) enhanced the immune responses developed after s.c. injection of some peptides (E7(44-62), KLH-conjugated L2(18-38) and L2(108-120)) to levels close to or even comparable to those after tattoo delivery of identical peptides with ODN1826. The highest efficacy of tattooing was observed in combination with ODN1826 for the vaccination with the less immunogenic E6(48-57) peptide and KLH-conjugated and non-conjugated E7(49-57) peptides which form the visible aggregates that could negatively influence the development of immune responses after s.c. injection but probably not after tattooing. In summary, we first evidenced that tattoo administration of peptide vaccines that might be useful in some cases efficiently induced both humoral and cell-mediated immune responses.

Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion Department of Experimental Virology U Nemocnice 1 12820 Prague 2 Czech Republic

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Transient expression of Human papillomavirus type 16 L2 epitope fused to N- and C-terminus of coat protein of Potato virus X in plants