Improving of biohybrid and biomimicking polymer-peptide conjugates

Nonimmunogenic synthetic polyelectrolytes (PEs) reveal immunoadjuvant activity in several systems, and their complexes/covalent conjugates induced biomolecules immunogenecity. The use of peptide epitops of virus particles in the composition of such conjugates as vaccine has several potential advantages over whole viral or bacterial preparation. Recently, physicochemical analyses of polymer-protein complexes, polymeric immunogens and their vaccine developments have been studied. In this thesis study, peptide epitops of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus (FMDV) of VP1 protein both 135-161 and 170-188 amino acid residues were synthesized by using the Fmoc method and were investigated the interaction of peptides with polyacrylic acid. VP/AA-Peptid bioconjugates were synthesized at different ratio of components (nPeptide/nPolymer), and pH value of solution in the presence of water-soluble 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) cardobodimide hydrochloride and using Microwave Technology at organic media. These structures of VP/AA-Peptid bioconjugates were investigated by using different physicochemical analyses methods (HPLC, GPC-with Ultra-viole Visible, Refractive Index, Light Scattering, and Fluorescence Spectroscopy). It was found that peptide oligomers bind to polymer macromolecules by cooperative mechanism: all added peptide molecules is strongly bound by the polyanione and the existence of the free polymer chains in the system under these conditions obviously indicates a non-random distribution of the peptide molecules between the anionic PEs. When peptide molecules are added to activated PEs solutions, one can assume that first the formation of the electrostatic interpolymer-peptide complexes occurs as the most rapidly proceeding process and then the condensation between carboxyl and amino groups of components (covalent conjugation) occurs. The dynamics of peptide-specific antibody formation induced by these conjugates were investigated. Keywords: Polyelectrolyte, biopolymer systems, immunogen, polymer-peptide conjugates, synthetic vaccine, foot-and-mouth disease virus