Identification of Enhanced Vaccine Mimotopes for the p15E Murine Cancer Antigen.

The MHC-I-restricted p15E tumor rejection epitope is expressed in multiple murine cancer lines and is used as a marker of antitumor cellular immunity, but has seen limited success as a vaccine immunogen. An in vivo screening approach based on a positional peptide microlibraries is used to identify enhanced p15E mimotopes bearing amino acid mutations that induce significantly improved functional immunogenicity relative to vaccination with the wild-type epitope.