Synthesis and immunological evaluation of Mincle ligands-based antitumor vaccines

The development of novel adjuvants constitutes a new strategy for the research of tumor vaccines. Immunomodulatory molecule adjuvants are one of the novel adjuvants that can effectively stimulate the pattern recognition receptors to activate the downstream pathways of immune cells. However, there are few studies on immunomodulatory molecular adjuvants associated with C-type lectin. It has been reported that GlcC₁₄C₁₈ is a Mincle ligand with a relatively simple structure and strong adjuvant activity in vivo. Herein, we coupled GlcC₁₄C₁₈ with MUC1 glycopeptide and evaluated its immune effect. In addition, we also synthesized α-GlcC₁₄C₁₈-MUC1 and β-GlcC₁₄C₁₈-MUC1 based on the two configurations of GlcC₁4C₁₈ and compared their immune effects. The results show that both of the two configurations of the vaccine have a good immune effect, but to a certain extent, the immune effect of β-GlcC₁₄C₁₈-MUC1 is better than that of α-GlcC₁₄C₁₈-MUC1.