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Hello Ladies,
I found this explanation on the web:
What is an Epitope?
Antibodies are raised by the immune system against regions on the surface of a protein known as Epitopes. An Epitope, or antigenic determinant, is defined as a region of 6-12 amino acid or carbohydrate residues to which an antibody can bind.
There are two types of Epitopes:
continuous
discontinuous
A continuous Epitope is composed of a contiguous stretch of residues in a protein. A discontinuous Epitope consists of a group of residues that are not contiguous in the sequence, but are brought together by the folding of the polypeptide chain, or by the juxtaposition of two separate peptide chains.
Soooo.... what does this all mean??
It seems that there are more than 1 antigen signatures that make-up HER/neu, and this particular vaccine has been able to activate epitopes across these antigens without having to be muti-antigen specific.
Lolly, I'll be interested in what the experts say.
Al
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