Vaccines that can elicit strong T-cell responses are undoubtedly one of the major challenges for medicine today. For this purpose, dendritic cells (DCs) have to internalize antigen, process them into peptide fragments and present them to T-cells. Whereas soluble antigen largely fails to induce potent cellular immune responses, formulation of antigen into microparticles has emerged as an attractive alternative. Here, we design polymeric carriers that mimic microbial structure and function. These carriers are composed of a polymeric multilayer membrane, encapsulating the antigen, and an outer surface layer of immune-modulating motifs. These systems dramatically enhance antigen presentation by dendritic cells to T cells as well as cytokine secretion in vitro. In vivo, capsule mediated antigen delivery leads to enhanced targeting of antigen to immune cells in the draining lymph nodes and strongly enhanced humoral and cellular immune responses, including cytotoxic T cells.

Synthetic vaccines: Mimicking microbial structure and function

244th National Meeting (2012)

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