Département de chimie moléculaire

The large majority of TACA-based (TACA=Tumor-Assocd. Carbohydrate Antigens) antitumor vaccines target only one carbohydrate antigen, thereby often resulting in the incomplete destruction of cancer cells. However, the morphol. heterogeneity of the tumor glycocalix, which is in const. evolution during malignant transformation, is a crucial point to consider in the design of vaccine candidates. In this paper, an efficient synthetic strategy based on orthogonal chemoselective ligations to prep. fully synthetic glycosylated cyclopeptide scaffolds grafted with both Tn and TF antigen analogs is reported. To evaluate their ability to be recognized as tumor antigens, direct interaction ELISA assays have been performed with the anti-Tn monoclonal antibody 9A7. Although both heterovalent structures showed binding capacities with 9A7, the presence of the second TF epitope did not interfere with the recognition of Tn except in one epitope arrangement. This heterovalent glycosylated structure thus represents an attractive epitope carrier to be further functionalized with T-cell peptide epitopes. [on SciFinder(R)]