Immunization with peptide-functionalized carbon nanotubes enhances virus-specific neutralizing antibody responses

Functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hold a lot of promise for application in medicinal chemistry. Based on a method for preparation of water-soluble CNTs, we covalently linked a neutralizing B cell epitope from the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) to mono- and bis-derivatized CNTs. Immunological characterization of these conjugates revealed that the epitope was appropriately presented after conjugation to CNTs for recognition by antibodies as measured by BlAcore technology. Moreover, peptide-carbon nanotubes elicited strong anti-peptide antibody responses in mice with no detectable cross-reactivity to the carbon nanotubes. However, only the mono-derivitized CNT conjugate induced high levels of virus-neutralizing antibodies. These findings highlight for the first time the potential of CNTs to present biologically important epitopes in an appropriate conformation both in vitro and in vivo and open up the possibility for their use in vaccine delivery.