Patent ID: 7462354

Claim:
A method for designing an optimized multi-epitope polypeptide comprising: (i) selecting ten or more epitopes that contain human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allele-specific motifs or supermotifs, wherein said epitopes are HLA class I cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes; (ii) sorting said ten or more epitopes to minimize the number of junctional epitopes, and (iii) incorporating said ten or more CTL epitopes into a multi-epitope polypeptide, wherein, during the incorporation step (iii): at least one flanking or spacer amino acid residue is introduced at the C-terminus of one or more of said ten or more CTL epitopes; wherein said flanking or spacer amino acid residue is selected from the group consisting of lysine (K), arginine (R), asparagine (N), glutamine (Q), glycine (G), alanine (A), serine (S), cysteine (C), and threonine (T); and wherein said flanking or spacer amino acid residue prevents the occurrence of a CTL junctional epitope.