Multiepitope supramolecular peptide nanofibers eliciting coordinated humoral and cellular antitumor immune responses

Abstract

Subunit vaccines inducing antibodies against tumor-specific antigens have yet to be clinically successful. Here, we use a supramolecular α-helical peptide nanofiber approach to design epitope-specific vaccines raising simultaneous B cell, CD8 + T cell, and CD4 + T cell responses against combinations of selected epitopes and show that the concurrent induction of these responses generates strong antitumor effects in mice, with significant improvements over antibody or CD8 + T cell–based vaccines alone, in both prophylactic and therapeutic subcutaneous melanoma models. Nanofiber vaccine–induced antibodies mediated in vitro tumoricidal antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) and antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP). The addition of immune checkpoint and phagocytosis checkpoint blockade antibodies further improved the therapeutic effect of the nanofiber vaccines against murine melanoma. These findings highlight the potential clinical benefit of vaccine-induced antibody responses for tumor treatments, provided that they are accompanied by simultaneous CD8 + and CD4 + responses, and they illustrate a multiepitope cancer vaccine design approach using supramolecular nanomaterials.