LAUSR

Helicobacter pylori colonize the stomach epithelium of half the world's population and are responsible for various digestive diseases and even stomach cancer. Vaccine-mediated protection against Helicobacter pylori infection depends primarily on the specific mucosal and T cell responses. In this study, the synthetic lipopeptide vaccines, Hp4 (Pam2 Cys modified UreB T cell epitope) and Hp10 (Pam2 Cys modified CagA T/B cell combined epitope), not only induce the bone marrow derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) maturation by activating a variety of pattern recognition receptors such as TLR, NLR and RLR, and but also stimulate BMDCs to secret cytokines that have the potential to modulate T cell activation and differentiation. Although intranasal immunization with Hp4 or Hp10 elicited robust epitope-specific T cell responses in mice, only Hp10 confers protection against Helicobacter pylori infection, possibly due to the fact that Hp10 also induces substantial specific sIgA response at mucosal sites. Interestingly, Hp4 elevates the protective response against Helicobacter pylori infection of Hp10 when administrated in combination, characterized by better protective effect and enhanced specific T cell and mucosal antibody responses. Our results suggest that synthetic lipopeptide vaccines based on the epitopes derived from the protective antigens are promising candidates for protection against Helicobacter pylori infection. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.