Commercially available vaccines are mostly based on live attenuated or dead pathogens. Subunit vaccines have also been approved for some infections. The use of other forms of vaccines including DNA/RNA, vector-based and peptide-based vaccines have not yet been approved for human diseases, and each of them has its own strengths and weakness. Conventional peptide vaccines are based on epitopic peptides that are recognized by receptors on lymphocytes, specifically T and/or B cells. These vaccines have the advantage of generating immune responses specifically directed against the targets’ epitopes, thus avoiding unrelated responses. However, due to MHC restriction, peptide vaccines especially epitope-based peptide vaccines cover relatively narrow populations. Moreover, identification of epitopes and MHC phenotyping are labour- intensive and time- consuming.

To overcome these drawbacks, some research groups proposed to use long overlapped peptides as vaccines, for which several phase II clinical trials have already shown efficacy – e.g. ISA’s HPV synthetic long peptide vaccine for cervical cancer and IMV’s survivin peptide vaccine for ovarian cancer. For convenience of industrial manufacturing (e.g easy quality control and regulation), recombinant overlapping peptides (ROP) have been also proposed as vaccines. In the light of these observations, research on antigen presentation of these innovative approaches is of key importance, and will shed new light on the development of safe and effective peptide-based vaccines.

With this Research Topic, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview on the current research on peptides vaccines, in terms of basic research, manufacturing and regulation, and clinical trials. Our goal is to improve the knowledge on this topic and to provide an answer to the many open questions in the field, such as: i) How a peptide vaccine is presented by Antigen Presenting Cells (APC)? ii) How do T cells respond to peptide vaccines? iii) How do peptide vaccines synergize with cancer therapies? iv) What is the best way of delivery for peptide vaccines and how adjuvants can help peptide vaccination?

We will welcome Original Research, Clinical Trial, Methods and Review articles addressing the following subtopics:

• Mechanisms of antigen-cross presentation for peptide vaccines
• T cell responses to peptide vaccines
• Prophylactic and/or therapeutic strategies for peptide vaccination
• Human and/or veterinary clinical trials using peptide vaccines against diseases (e.g. Viral/Cancer etc.)
• Combination studies – e.g. Immune checkpoint inhibitors + Peptide vaccines
• Methods of targeting DCs/APCs
• Peptide drug delivery systems
• Personalized Peptide Vaccines (PPV)

Dr. Jiang is founder and director of Oxford Vacmedix UK Ltd, an Oxford University spinout company. The other Topic Editors declare no conflict of interest with regards to the Research Topic theme.

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Frontiers in Immunology

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