Immunization with peptide-protein conjugates: impact on benchmarking B-cell epitope prediction for vaccine design.

Benchmarking B-cell epitope prediction for vaccine design is meaningful if based on empirical reference data pertaining to cross-reactivities of antipeptide antibodies with native protein antigens; yet it is complicated by such data acquired using antibodies raised against peptide-protein conjugates, as peptide-protein conjugation can differentially suppress antibody responses to peptide epitopes.