ABSTRACT
The flexibility that a peptide vaccine offers compared with a conventional vaccine, as the results with foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) peptides reveal, augurs well for their eventual adoption as useful products. The interest that was generated by the observation that peptides could stimulate protective immune responses against some virus diseases such as FMD and hepatitis B has led to studies to determine whether it would be possible to apply the knowledge to make vaccines. The coupling of peptides to proteins can be achieved by a variety of methods. The success of this approach would seem to require the placing of the peptide sequence in an immunodominant region of the fusion protein. Any peptide vaccine which is constructed will have to compete with an existing vaccine for its place in the market. The preliminary experiments provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the prospects for an FMDV peptide vaccine are extremely promising.
