Chonnam National University Professor Junhaeng Lee (Department of Medicine) and Sieun Lee (Department of Dentistry) research team utilizes global source technology for flagellin immune enhancer that has been secured through years of research to induce a strong and precise immune response as well as to induce a tumor-suppressing effect. platform’ technology was successfully developed.
According to the research team, vaccines used for disease prevention and treatment recently include ‘antigens’ for inducing immune responses as well as ‘immune adjuvants’ that enhance the effect of vaccine antigens. are stepping out
However, flagellin, which the Chonnam National University team has been researching, has been found to be the only protein immune enhancer that can stimulate not only ‘TLR5’, a pattern recognition receptor (PRR) on the cell surface, but also NLRC4, a PRR, which is present in the cytoplasm. However, until now, there has been no way to stimulate these two at the same time.
In the midst of this, the research team has succeeded in discovering a cytoplasmic influx peptide that can selectively target ‘dendritic cells’, which is responsible for the first step of strong defense immunity, and directly drag proteins into the cytoplasm.
In addition, by combining the know-how of recombinant protein technology, the vaccine antigen and flagellin adjuvant are simultaneously introduced into dendritic cells to develop an ‘integrated vaccine’ that can stimulate the TLR5 and NLRC4 systems at the same time.
The research team also demonstrated that cancer can be treated by attaching the peptide to the flagellin adjuvant and cancer antigen conjugate to induce a strong cancer-killing cellular immune response. Following the domestic patent application for the integrated vaccine formulation, the research team is in the process of filing an international patent application.
The first authors of this study were ‘Dr. Sao Puth’ and ‘Dr. Vivek Verma’, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Hormel Institute, USA, and their papers were published in the international scientific journal ‘Biomaterials’ (impact index 12.479).
Meanwhile, the research team said, “This study is being evaluated as a platform technology that can be applied to various immunotherapy methods to treat non-infectious diseases such as cancer as well as prevent viral infections such as COVID-19 or bacterial infections such as tuberculosis.” said.