Immunogenicity Assessment of Cell Wall Carbohydrates of Group A Streptococcus via Self-Adjuvanted Glyco-lipopeptides

Identifying the immunogenic moieties and their precise structure of carbohydrates plays an important role for developing effective carbohydrate-based subunit vaccines. This study assessed the structure-immunogenicity relationship of carbohydrate moieties of a single repeating unit of group A carbohydrate (GAC) present on the cell wall of group A Streptococcus (GAS) using a rationally designed self-adjuvanted lipid-core peptide, instead of a carrier protein. Immunological evaluation of fully synthetic glyco-lipopeptides (particle size: 300-500 nm) revealed that construct consisting of higher rhamnose moieties (trirhamnosyl-lipopeptide) was able to induce enhanced immunogenic activity in mice, and GlcNAc moiety was not found to be an essential component of immunogenic GAC mimicked epitope. Trirhamnosyl-lipopeptide also showed 75-97% opsonic activity against four different clinical isolates of GAS and was comparable to a subunit peptide vaccine (J8-lipopeptide) which illustrated 65-96% opsonic activity.