Main Properties of Antigen and Strategies to Enhance Immunogenicity

Properties of Antigen to Induce Immunogenicity

Describe The Main Properties Of An Antigen That Can Influence Its Immunogenicity And Discuss How These Properties Can Be Modified To Increase Immunogenicity.

Immunogenicity is considered as the property due to which substances such as antigens or epitopes are able to initiate an immune response these immune responses are often are associated with cell mediated or humoral immune response (Golden and Apetoh 2015). While discussing about the immunogenicity associated with any antigen, the factors that influence the immunogenicity should be discussed effectively (Stevanović et al. 2017).

Hence, this would be the primary aim of this paper and eventually with discussion about the antigen and the concept of immunogenicity, the factors that induces such incident would be discussed. Further, the process of modification of these factors to increase the immunogenicity would also be discussed.

As per Lucas, Leffell and Zachary (2015), antigens are protein substances that are present on the cells of foreign bodies and due to which the immune system becomes able to identify those harmful substances and develop a series of immune response to destroy or eliminate the protein substance from human system. There are multiple factors that are associated with the immunogenicity of the antigens and these includes its chemical composition and heterogeneity, presence of foreign substance, its size, its solubility and susceptibility to antigen processing and presentation. As per Stevanović et al. (2017), due to higher internal molecular properties, complexity and heterogeneity, antigen are able to induce immunogenic responses. Being foreign to the human body is the other property due to which it becomes easier for antigens to identify the substance and increase immunological response against it. The third factor which is associated with the immunogenicity is the presentation of the foreign antigens through Antigen Presenting Cells (APCs) to the T^H cells for the processing of either humoral and cell mediated immune responses. On the other hand, it was mentioned that if any antigen is unable to get processes through the application of Antigen Presenting Cells then they are unable to be presented to the T^H cells and hence, they become unable to create a proper response associated with immunogenicity. The fourth factor is associated with solubility and body fluids as Garg et al. (2015) mentions that if the foreign protein is able to dissolve in the bodily fluid then it becomes able to create a stronger immunogenic response and hence, increases the chances of a stronger immune response. Size has also been observed with a proper and stronger immune responses and as per Galluzzi et al. (2017) if the size of the antigen or the foreign protein is about or more than 100000 Daltons, then those proteins are able to generate a proper and appropriate immunogenic response and hence the immunogenicity is observed. Therefore, from this discussion it is identified that there are 5 or 6 important factors associated with the properties of antigen due to which immunogenicity is observed.

Strategies to Enhance Immunogenicity of Antigens

As per Stevanović et al. (2017), there are multiple strategies that could be used for the enhancement of the immunogenicity of the antigens or the foreign proteins so that they could use them for the enhanced immune responses or to study the way these proteins help the human body to increase the level of antibodies. In this process, it was mentioned that with application of the chemical complications associated changes to the antigens it can increase their ability to increase the immunogenicity of the antigen and increase the immune response. Besides this, it was mentioned in the research of Galluzzi et al. (2017) that with increase in the size of the antigens, it is mentioned that Antigen Presenting Cells would be able to process the antigens and present it to the T^H cells. Hence, changing the size of the antigen could also be one of the primary modifications using which the immunogenicity of the antigen could be increased. However, while doing such modifications, there are multiple aspects that could increase the complications of the human body and these factors could be properly analysed and tested prior to implementation in the practical situation. Therefore, these are the aspects that could be changed for the development and enhancement of the immunogenicity of the antigens in the human body (Garg et al. 2017).

Conclusion

While concluding this paper, it should be mentioned that antigens are associated with processes due to which the human bodies are able to detect the foreign proteins and then using them could help the humans to generate antibodies associated and against the protein. This paper identifies the antigens and the associated immunogenicity and highlights the factors due to which the immunogenicity of the antigens increases. Further, in this paper strategies to increase the immunogenicity of the antigens has also been mentioned effectively.

References

Galluzzi, L., Buqué, A., Kepp, O., Zitvogel, L. and Kroemer, G., 2017. Immunogenic cell death in cancer and infectious disease. Nature Reviews Immunology, 17(2), p.97.

Garg, A.D., Dudek-Peric, A.M., Romano, E. and Agostinis, P., 2015. Immunogenic cell death. International Journal of Developmental Biology, 59(1-2-3), pp.131-140.

Golden, E.B. and Apetoh, L., 2015, January. Radiotherapy and immunogenic cell death. In Seminars in radiation oncology (Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 11-17). WB Saunders.

Lucas, D.P., Leffell, M.S. and Zachary, A.A., 2015. Differences in immunogenicity of HLA antigens and the impact of cross-reactivity on the humoral response. Transplantation, 99(1), p.77.

Stevanović, S., Pasetto, A., Helman, S.R., Gartner, J.J., Prickett, T.D., Howie, B., Robins, H.S., Robbins, P.F., Klebanoff, C.A., Rosenberg, S.A. and Hinrichs, C.S., 2017. Landscape of immunogenic tumor antigens in successful immunotherapy of virally induced epithelial cancer. Science, 356(6334), pp.200-205.